


Elegy for Fall [13 Days of Clexa]

by Dogtreat



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 13daysofclexa, Clextober, F/F, Halloween, Prompt Fill, clextober18
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-04 08:19:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 33,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16343240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dogtreat/pseuds/Dogtreat
Summary: Filling the 13 Halloween/Fall prompts for Clextober '18.





	1. Pumpkins

**Author's Note:**

> See [Clextober Tumblr for more information.](https://clextober.tumblr.com/)

Lexa isn’t stupid.

Lexa isn’t blind either.

In fact Lexa sees most things, courtesy of her many eyes around the city.

So when Clarke sneaks out one _very_ early morning from the central tower, hood pulled up around her head and chin ducked. Lexa knows about almost instantly.

She has someone follow Clarke, nobody too intrusive or obvious. Just a shadow. Vague enough to blend into the background clutter of Polis.

Word comes throughout the morning and well into the day. Carried by birds or in the hands of small hoards of eager children. Updates on Clarke’s whereabouts and why she is being so secretive to begin with.

First it is word about Clarke browsing the market. Talking eagerly with men and women and bartering back and forth. And later, a list arrives of the items she’s purchased. Sets of knives and serrated spoons and old world tools lovingly polished and shined.

The second dossier comes from the very edge of the city; beyond its true walls but not its border. The farming fields. Wide and open and being tended to as Fall comes to its rapid close. Tubers and squashes and roots vegetables galore. And word comes back that Clarke is knee deep helping the farmers, blonde hair tied up in a messy knot; all in return for a cart full of squashes, if the information is to be believed. Which it isn’t because Lexa _knows_ Clarke doesn’t like pumpkin.

And then nothing more comes. Lexa waits patiently _all day_ for further information. But as the day drags on and none comes she begins to worry. Even when she sends a scout to report on the situation of the first, and another one to report on _that_ one. Neither return with any information beyond ‘ _Clarke is fine_ ’ or _‘Wanheda is well_.’

Even Aden, who is to pretend he just so happened to be in the same are at the same time, returns with a smile and a shrug of his shoulders. And when Lexa all but demands him to spill his tongue, he chuckles and tells her that he could not find _Wanheda_ (not Clarke, Lexa realizes).

So she sulks the remainder of the afternoon. Not visibly, because that would not become the leader of the Coalition but, still—

* * *

It’s not until after dark that she gets word on her Clarke’s position. And it’s from none other than Clarke’s personal guard, Ayvan. Usually stoic and stone faced, now with a glint of mischievousness in his eye.

“ _Wanheda_ requests your presence in the training hall, _Heda_ ,” he says, hands folded at his back, “Oh and I am to implore its urgency.”

Lexa squints and squares her shoulders but follows nonetheless. And when she tries to squirrel information from Ayvan, she’s met with silence and a shake of the head. And Clarke should consider herself lucky that Lexa does not string her guard up and prod him for information. But she doesn’t and the walk remains quiet as ever.

The cacophony of muffled laughter from the training hall hits her before anything else. And when she turns to raise an eyebrow at Ayvan he shrugs and opens the door, holding his arm out for her to proceed.

If she’s being honest she’s not quite sure what she expected.

Anything but this, really.

The Nightbloods, all of them, sit in a wide arcing circle, each of them curled around a squash double the size of their heads; tools in hands and masks of concentration and laughter slipping across their features; excited chatter thrown about. And Clarke is scooting around them, covered head to toe in pumpkin flesh and seed.

Lexa lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding before allowing herself a half smile, hands tucked at her back as she approaches, “And pray tell, what is this mess?”

“ _H_ _eda!_ ” Aden all but yells, scrambling to his feet and the others quickly following; learned behavior but one appreciated nonetheless.

“Sit. Continue— whatever this is.”

Clarke smiles and steps gingerly around one of the youngest, touching at their head in such a gentle and loving way that it makes Lexa’s heart ache.

“Jack-o’-lanterns,” Clarke explains, and when Lexa furrows her brow she laughs and takes her hand, pulling her to the only pumpkin still not touched, “You carve a face into them. Or anything you want really.”

“Why?” Lexa asks as she’s pulled into a sitting position, Clarke scooting in close beside her.

“Halloween. All Hallows’ Eve. Beginning of Winter, last days of Harvest,” Clarke continues as she pushes the tools at Lexa, “They protect you from evil spirits. Or something. I’m not sure. It’s fun and they look cute. We couldn’t make them on the Ark and I thought— The children deserve a break. So do you.”

Lexa thinks she falls in love with Clarke a little more after that. It’s been over a year since the Mountain. A year since Clarke stood firmly beside her in their civil war with Azgeda. A year since, covered in dried blood and with shaking hands, Clarke kissed her in the first snow of the season and promised a better future.

“Here. Try. We saved the biggest for you,” Clarke laughs, “I have to help everyone else, but if you need tips I’m your girl,” she winks as she scoots off back towards the youngest, pressing a kiss into the side of their head as they beam up at her with pride.

* * *

Lexa has never considered herself an artist. That was left to her Mother. And then to Costia. And now to Clarke. But she takes the tools up in her hands anyway and looks at the fleshed out squash and considers what to do.

Most of the children are doing some spooky, grinning faces. Traced from paper that Clarke has scribbled on and laid about the center of the circle. Aden _somehow_ has a small tree carved out into his; leaving some skin behind to darken the eventual look.

So she ponders and ponders before taking a breath and finally settling.

At first it's hard going. The skin of the vegetable is not as pliable as Clarke seems to make it out as being. But eventually she finds her groove and she carves and carves.

She’s _really_ not an artist.  _Truly_.

But when Clarke settles beside her, she cannot help but turn to look at the girl and beg for praise. And Clarke is looking at the pumpkin like it means the world. And when she turns to survey her own work again she feels the press of lips against the shell of her ear before Clarke moves off again to survey the others works. No words said but the praise still felt.

* * *

When it’s all said and done and the night is truly along its way; dinner being had still curled around the pumpkins below. Each of them carries their prize to Lexa’s throne room. Placing them down around the plinth from youngest to oldest. And Clarke settle’s Lexa’s right beside the throne itself, shaking her head and lighting the candle within.

It makes for a very interesting little light show. Throwing oranges and reds and yellows across the room in a way the plain candles and braziers do not. And if Titus has any disapproval on the matter he doesn’t show it; instead praising the children on their work and then promptly shepherding them out to bed, promising them their carvings will remain for as long as they do not rot.

“You really did try hard on it,” Clarke says with a light chuckle, threading their fingers together as they remain standing and watching the candlelight show, “Who knew you were an artist.”

“Mockery is not the product of a strong mind, Clarke,” Lexa says, feeling the flush of embarrassment reach her cheeks.

“I love it,” Clarke replies and leaning up to press a kiss into a warm cheek, “You really captured the essence of a raccoon.”

Lexa sours and shakes her head, her cheeks growing hotter and darker, “It was _meant_ to be my warpaint. I admit I am not very good at eyes.”

“Uh-huh. Sure— _snacha_.”

“ _Clarke_!”


	2. Horror Movies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See [Clextober Tumblr](https://clextober.tumblr.com/) for more information.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Why not? It’ll be _fun_.”

“You _know_ why. I don’t like them.”

Clarke really is not above using dirty tactics to win fights. Lexa knows this. Lexa knows this _far too well_ . And yet she still finds herself surprised when she feels Clarke crawl over her back and quietly _moan_ a “Please” against the shell of ear.

And she really should be stronger. She really should. But she’s not. Not around Clarke. Never around Clarke. So she whines and buries her head deeper into the pillow and Clarke takes it as a win. Squealing and clambering off her and grabbing the phone she’d deposited onto the table before.

“Lexa says yes, Raven. Tell Bell to bring more drinks. We only have beer.”

They’d been doing this every Halloween from the moment they all left for college. Every year they’d draw someone’s house or dorm or apartment from the proverbial hat and pile in said place like sardines. And Monty or Jasper would set up sheets and projectors and they’d all watch horror movies from dusk till dawn.

Even now. Years after the tradition started. It still remained a steadfast event in their lives. Thanksgiving and Christmas was reserved for families— Halloween was _theirs_ . And this year, Lexa’s name had been drawn from the hat which meant _Clarke’s_ name was _also_ drawn from the hat. Which also meant that there was no easy way out of this.

Lexa, every year since they moved away from Polis, found some convenient reason why she was able to tap out of the festivities early. And Clarke would follow. Because Clarke was a good, _loving_ , girlfriend. Even when the event was hosted at Clarke’s own apartment, she let Lexa crawl out of the living room and into the bedroom and stay tucked away there for the rest of the evening.

As far as the rest of the group was concerned. Lexa was not _afraid_ of horror films. She just _despised_ them. Found them boring and trite, she said. And Lexa was just enough of an apathetic cold little creature that the group ate that explanation up like horses to feed, she was sure.

Truthfully. Lexa was _terrified_.

It was Anya’s fault. Anya and that fucking Jeepers Creepers fim when Lexa was a child. Anya forcing Lexa to sit through it all and then staunchly refusing to take blame for Lexa being too terrified to go to bed alone for _weeks_ afterwards.

So yes, Lexa _hated_ horror films. But not because they were boring. But because she was _scared_.

When she felt her girlfriend dip into the bed again, buzzing with barely contained excitement, she shot her a glare and zipped her mouth tightly closed.

“Awh, Lexa, babe. It’ll be _fine_. We aren’t watching anything super scary, I promise.”

* * *

Clarke is a lying piece of shit, Lexa later decides.

She still loves her. Adores her. Will marry her, one day. But Clarke is a _lying turd_.

At the very least she’s glad for the fact she banned anyone from stealing her favorite recliner for the feature film of the night. Because with Clarke perched on her lap, at least she could secretly bury her head in Clarke’s side and only jump when she so much as had an _inkling_ something scary was occurring.

The Conjuring is fucking _terrifying_.

But Clarke is good.

Clarke is a kind and benevolent girlfriend (aside from making false promises). Because Clarke winds her fingers through Lexa’s hair and strokes calming, soft patterns against her scalp; a move both of them know sends Lexa into a sleepy, comforted little puddle in Clarke’s hands.

And Clarke is warm and Clarke is not easily scared. So when the others all jump and scream, Clarke manages to remain steadfast to not scare Lexa even more into a panic.

“You’re a baby, Lexa-rexa,” Clarke whispers against the side of her head, pulling up the nickname Jake had given Lexa years and years and years ago, “It’s not so bad.”

Clarke is a lying piece of shit.

Because _something_ happens on screen and Clarke startles so hard her cider splashes over the edge of her cup and all over her lap. And then all of a sudden, Clarke’s up and away to find towels and Lexa’s alone in the recliner and being forced to stare at the projected movie as if she was actually watching it to begin with.

The only saving grace is Lincoln, reaching the hand not wrapped around Octavia’s over to Lexa’s; giving her knuckles a squeeze and throwing a _very sympathetic_ look in her direction.

Lexa will _kill_ Clarke, she thinks, even if she _does_ love her.

* * *

Everyone curls around each other on the floor and on the couches and on the mattress Bellamy and Murphy haul up the elevator from _God knows where_.

And Lexa pulls the warm, comforting blankets of her bed up to her neck and stares straight at the ceiling.

It’s Jeepers Creepers all over again, she thinks. And Gustus isn’t here to crawl into bed with and fight the pretend monsters away.

Instead it’s her gremlin of a girlfriend; who sidles up next to her smelling of beer and cheap spirits and the mouthwash they share and something so _inherently_ Clarke that the race in Lexa’s heart slows down to a gentle thump.

“You’re lucky I love you, Clarke Griffin,” she says.

And she feels Clarke’s hand snake its away around her waist and a sloppy, beautifully soft kiss plant against her temple.

“I’m actually kind of spooked,” Clarke says with a shaky little chuckle, “Raven’s an ass. She chose all the movies tonight. She said they weren’t that scary.”

And _damn_ Lexa’s inherently protective nature. Or maybe not. Maybe Lexa should thank it. Because whatever residual fear she has leftover from being forced to sit through _hours_ of scary films, evaporates in an instant at the _very mention_ that Clarke is scared.

“I’ll protect you,” she grumbles as she curls around Clarke’s form, feeling it slacken and relax and melt into her own, “You ass.”

“I love you, Lexa Woods,” Clarke whispers, a sneaky hand feeling its way down Lexa’s back until it’s firmly planted against the curve of her bum, “Softest, strongest, most bravest girlfriend in all of the land.”

“Next year we are miraculously going to be in Australia with your family where they don’t celebrate this holiday, right? Like Anya is this year.”

“Mmhm,” Clarke says, and it’s a semi-empty response, Lexa knows, “Sure and we’ll sit through _all_ the old slasher flicks my dad owns. Big scaredy cat, Lexa-rexa, he’ll say.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Mmm, soft,” Clarke mumbles in a barely awake voice as she kneads the flesh beneath her fingers.

And maybe Lexa _hates_ horror films and is _terrified_ of horror films— a fact she will later be told the entire group knows but keeps to themselves. But she _loves_ Clarke Griffin. And Clarke Griffin _loves_ horror films and Halloween. And if Lexa is sure of anything, it’s that she’d face a thousand Jeepers Creepers to please Clarke Griffin.

Still. She doesn’t sleep the entire night. Eyes trained _very strictly_ on the door.

You know. _Just in case._


	3. Hocus Pocus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't really want to write about Hocus Pocus, or like... Practical Magic either. 
> 
> But I do like curses and witches and magic. So that bred this.
> 
> Hope this is okay still!
> 
> catch me over at my tumblr [@bestheda](http://bestheda.tumblr.com/) there's an accompanying moodboard to this story there :)

She was the superstitious sort.

The kind of person that throws salt over their shoulder, won’t walk under ladders, and won’t live on the thirteenth floor.

She also holds her breath going past cemeteries but that’s not a superstition, that’s just polite.

These habits were most definitely bred from her Mother. Who, later in life, Lexa realizes was probably just a little sick and not-all-right in the head.

Her Mother who moved houses at least once a year, not allowing Lexa to ever settle. Her Mother who believed they were being followed all Lexa’s life; stalked, even. Her Mother who wouldn’t allow mirrors inside, because it would invite ‘the devils’ in. Who wouldn’t allow Lexa to bring friends over, because they might be working for _them_ . Who would have to count the cracks on the ceiling to make sure no new ones appeared, because that’s how _they_ travelled. Who freaked out when Lexa brought a homemade candle back from school and moved them across four states.

Lexa never did find out who _they_ are or were or might have been.

Because at age seventeen, after innumerous moves and schools and lives later, she comes home from class to an empty household and dinner still warm on the table. This ends in a county-wide missing persons case opening, which comes up empty, and forces Lexa to be put into foster care for a whole year before she bails and figures life out on her own.

Her Mother wasn’t a bad person, Lexa thinks. And she doesn’t blame her for running away and leaving Lexa behind. One day she hopes she’ll get word but, until then—

* * *

She continues her life post-Mother relatively plainly.

Goes to community college and gets an Associates in Accounting, which she’s absolutely trash at and doesn’t want to do for the rest of her life, but it looks good on her resume. And then packs her meager belongings and moves from town to town to town all up and down the East Coast.

She’s pretty and she’s smart and she’s quick on her feet and jobs aren’t hard to find when you’re all of those things. So she keeps her head low and she works and when someone gets a _little too close_ she moves on; because if there is one thing her childhood instilled in her its a distrust of people.

One town though. One town sticks out.

A small little thing in the countryside of Pennsylvania; quaint and quiet and homey.

She skips town the moment the local mechanic pulls her aside at the bar and looks at her like she _knows_ her and asks if her last name is Woods. Which it _is._ But it’s also not the name she applied to the job with. So she runs. And she stays gone.

Or at least, she tries.

Four towns and a little over half a year later she’s back again and her old boss, Gustus, she remembers, gives her the same old bar job; as if seven months hadn’t allowed it to be filled.

She skips yet again when Gustus invites her to dinner with his daughter, Anya. And when they’re all sat around the table and eating, Anya points a string bean at her and says “Wolf”. Which is her favourite animal, but nobody here should know that.

At least this time when she puts her resignation in, Gustus smacks her firmly on the back and hugs her and tells her he’ll see when she comes back ‘round. As if he already knows she will.

And Lexa tries _really_ hard to stay away after _that_ incident. Even if it _did_ leave her feeling good and warm and kind of welcomed and tingly.

But two years later she finds herself back in a cramped Greyhound and promptly clambering over passengers to exit at the backwards ass, otherwise empty, bus-station; yet again.

The road into the town is a fair hike and she’s done it four times already, and it gives her time to dwell on why this place sticks with her.

It’s so damn insignificant it doesn’t appear on local maps and Google just kind of 404’s when she tries to check it out on street view. Which is okay, she figures. Lots of small towns are like that. The smaller and less known, the better.

She high-fives the ‘ _Welcome to Polis_ ’ sign as she passes below it; which is customary, Gustus told her years before.

* * *

It’s all the same.

The rows of shops, the houses, the little gold cat on the corner of Greenway Avenue, the gas station with the attached mechanics.

In the three years since she very first arrived, the town hasn’t really budged an inch.

And when she trudges into the bar, sweaty and disgusting from the early-Fall heat, she finds even the customers are the same. And when Gustus emerges from the back room barely having aged at all, she’s swept up into a hug and a sloppy hand rubbed at her head.

“Welcome back, kid,” he says and throws her an apron and gestures behind the counter; as if it hasn’t been two and a bit years since she last worked it.

This time though, she stays.

She stays when the bar regulars call her by her name. She stays when the mechanic comes trudging in some days later and slaps her cash down and asks for a beer and gives an all too familiar smile to Lexa. She stays even when Gustus mentions having dinner with Anya again; who just as happily sweeps Lexa up into a hug like some kind of long lost sister.

She stays when the town Mayor, Indra, pulls her aside after a work meeting at the hall beside the bar and asks if she wants somewhere better to live than Gustus’ couch and offers a low-rent forest-side house.

And she _especially_ stays when she trudges up the rickety wooden steps and finds the Greenway Avenue gold cat waiting to be let inside.

For the first time in her life, she stays, and she settles.

* * *

One of her first purchases aside from the essentials comes in the form of a mirror; something her Mother would never allow. And she spends a great deal of time trying to work out where one actually _puts_ a mirror to begin with, eventually settling it beside her closet.

Then next big purchase comes from throwing a small dinner party, for Gustus and Anya and the mechanic, Raven. And they crowd her small cottage and remark how nice Lexa has made the place. And when the gold cat curls up on Lexa’s lap, she doesn’t miss the way they look at it as if it’s never allowed someone to touch it before.

She buys candles too. Lots of candles. Because the lights in the house are shoddy at best and downright dangerous at worst. She lights them and crowds them and stacks them and bathes in their golden firelight glow and scolds the cat when it hangs its paw over the open flame more than once.

It’s nice, she thinks.

It’s nice and calm and it’s a _home_ for the first time in Lexa’s life.

* * *

A particularly bad storm keeps her contained indoors for _days_.

Gustus drives his truck over on the third to drop off some groceries and begs her not to make the trek into work until the storm clears, fearing her safety. And he presses a kisses to her forehead and promises to check on her again later.

She’s alone. Bar the presence of the idiot cat who shepherds mice about instead of catching them. It’s a different kind of alone than she’s used to though. Surrounded by items she’s bought to fill the home with more life than any of her childhood homes.

She reads in the candlelight and sketches and knits and eats cold canned pork and beans. And only startles from the calm when the cat knocks over a side table and sends candles sprawling everywhere. None of them catch anything alight, thankfully, and she stacks them back up and scolds the cat _again_ and relights them one by one.

On the very last she falters, the fingers holding the match trembling for a moment. She cannot remember buying a black candle; her Mother had always been _particularly_ strict about that rule. It doesn’t fit in with the rest of the tables candles, either. But it must have been there, she reasons, why else would it be in here house.

The cat sits idly by, flicking its tail, watching her deliberate.

She feels her fingers begin to burn as the flame creeps up and quickly she ducks forward and lights the wick and shakes the match out.

She takes a breath and blows on her fingers and glances around.

She’s of the superstitious sort, after all.

The storm rages outside and smacks wind and rain against the glass of her windows. And the floor still creaks underfoot. And the cat still stands idly by, swishing their tail back and forth. And when all is well and the world hasn’t ended, she returns to her chair and grabs her book and buries her nose in it again.

* * *

“Hello, Finn,” a soft voice startles her not hours later and she all but jumps from her seat and fumbles her book and throws her eyes around in the dim light of the room.

_Hallway,_ she thinks. _Hallway is where the voice came from._

She elects to grab the fire poker, just in case, and quietly dodges about the squeaky floorboards until she can peak around the opening to the hall; poker raised.

But it’s a girl.

Or. Yeah, no. It’s a regular girl.

_Kind of._

If you can count a person with small horn stubs and a witches hat and a fucking _broom_ as being a regular girl. Which Lexa doesn’t and can’t. She can’t even find it in herself to _scream;_ especially not when the girl, creature, _thing_ , looks up at her with shimmering blue eyes and beams a grin.

“Oh wow,” she, they, _it_ says as they spring to their feet, cradling the cat in their arms, “Wow you grew up to look _just_ like your Father, did you know that?”

“I—” Lexa utters out and blinks slowly, lowering the fire poker and regarding the person again.

“Yeah! You really do. Same eyes. I’d never forget the eyes. It’s been _ages_ since I last saw you, wow. Look how big you’ve grown! Taller than me probably!”

And Lexa flinches when they bounce over to her and measure their height difference. And _yeah_ , she is only just taller than the stranger— _thing_.

“Wow, yup! Jeez. How long has it been, like twenty something years? I love what you’ve done with the place.”

She watches her flounce around the room, the cat looking way too pleased to be scooped up along for the ride; inspecting every inch of Lexa’s personal space. And it takes _everything_ in her not to immediately run out into the storm and escape the town yet again.

“Who— _What_ are you?”

The girl startles and gives Lexa a look, like she’s _hurt_ by the question and then gestures at herself as if Lexa should already know, “Clarke. Clarke Griffin. I’m your— we were best friends until you moved away? Seriously? Where’s your Mom, by the way?”

“Dead, probably,” Lexa deadpans in response and holds her fingers against the bridge of her nose, “I asked _what_ you were.”

“Demon, obviously,” Clarke replies and yet again gives her a look as if Lexa is the dense one, “I mean duh, my whole family is. Well I’m half witch, ‘cause of my Dad. But you know, whatever.”

Lexa closes her eyes and heaves a sigh.

_Her Mother was right,_ she thinks.

* * *

She startles awake some time later, Clarke hanging over her with a look of concern.

It can’t have been long because the storm is still raging outside and it is still _very_ much dark.

“You passed out,” Clarke says and sits back on her heels, “You snore, now. It’s kind of cute.”

Obviously she hadn’t hurt herself, which thank _God_ really. So she rubs at her face and pushes herself to a sitting position, “Why?”

“Oh I don’t know I assumed you have a condition—”

“No, I know that. I mean _why_ —” she continues before stopping and gesturing vaguely at the person; Clarke.

“You summoned me?” Clarke motions at the black candle behind Lexa, “Or actually, I think Finn kind of forced your hand there. He’s an ass. But I’m thankful.”

“Finn?”

“The cat.”

“The cat, right.”

Clarke smiles and rocks on her heels and then flushes _bright red_ and says, “Sorry! I peered into your mind while you were sleeping. You moved around _so much_. No wonder we couldn’t find you. And honestly, super rude of your Mother to keep your magic away like that.”

“My— Magic? My Mother was sick. I—”

“I mean, yeah. My Mom cursed her. So I’d imagine so.”

* * *

“You’ve _got_ to stop doing that,” she hears Clarke murmur as she feels herself coming out of sleep again; no floor this time though. Bed. Her warm, comfy, safe bed. And Clarke. Standing off to the side.

“Hungh?”

“Passing out. Stop doing it.”

“Sorry,” Lexa says and struggles to sit up, propping the pillows up behind her head as she does so, “It’s been a long day. Where were we?”

_It’s weird,_ Lexa thinks.

Weird she trusts the girl. Weird she believes her. Weird that this place felt like home before she actually moved here; because it _was_ apparently. Or maybe not, who knows. Demon-witch-girl-thing could be lying, for all Lexa knows.

“Mom’s curse. My Mom. Abby, her name is Abby. Gosh she’s going to be happy when she gets word you’re back— anyway. My Mom cursed your Mom, because she threatened me. And threatened _you_ . And then the next day you two were _gone_ . My Mom was _pissed_. She’s been searching for you two for years and years. Every time she got close ya’ll had already gone. But here you are! Wow.”

“Cursed. My Mother was _cursed?”_

“Don’t pass out again.”

_She really could be lying,_ Lexa thinks. But, instinctively, she knows she’s not.

Instinctively she knows the girl, Clarke, isn’t really capable of lying. As instinctively as she knows that Clarke’s favourite color is green, because it’s the same color as Lexa’s eyes.

“Do you still like green?” Lexa asks, just in case.

“Mmhm. Like your eyes, right? Do you still like blue?”

“Yeah— Like yours. Fuck it’s all coming back to me.”

“Ooh. One for the swear jar.”

And that is something Lexa _also knows_ , instinctively; the location of the swear jar. Stashed in the cupboard she can’t really reach above the fridge; filled with trinkets and pennies and golden coins.

“Gustus— Is Gustus related to me? Is that why he—”

“Uncle Gus? Yeah. Of course he is. He was your Dad’s brother.”

Lexa feels the swimming in her head but takes a few deep breaths and closes her eyes and rubs her fingers at her forehead and—

* * *

She’s standing in a small opening, flanked on every side by evergreens and forest and encroaching dark. The stick, no, the _sword_ in her hand is heavy and she feels the back of her neck sweat.

Just beyond where the shadows come, she can see the eyes moving about. Sets and sets of them. At least six people, creatures, _things_.

And then all of a sudden, Clarke is at her side. Seven year old Clarke with the wild blonde braids and the untrimmed horns and the floppy magical hat; and Finn is as large as a lion beside her, roaring into the forest and scattering their enemies.

“Yeah that’s right!” Clarke yells and thrusts her stick-sword in the sky, “Run away! Come’on Lex, we gotsa get back to base!”

And Lexa knows she’s playing capture the flag and she’s the flag bearer, but Clarke is at her side and she feels _invincible_ for it.

And then Octavia and Bellamy spring from underground beside them and Clarke and Finn lunge at them and they scuffle and she hears Clarke yell for her to _run_.

And she does; because she trusts Clarke.

Raven joins her sometime in the run back to the base, sparking to life from a bird overhead and slapping Lexa on the back, “Way to go, Lex! Oh shit, here comes Anya. Run. _Run!_ ”

And Lexa hits the ground running and she’s never felt so _free_ and beautiful and _wild._

And when all six-foot-something of the then nine year old Lincoln jumps from the trees, roaring and charging at her in his half-bull form, she jumps aside and dodges and feels the change flow through her body and through her fingers and through her bones.

It used to be painful, when she was younger and smaller and more afraid. But Clarke made it easy. Clarke taught her to change and morph and become herself without the pain and fear that her Mother insisted on instilling in her.

And when she snaps her wolf-like head up and snarls back at the Minotaur boy in front of her, she lunges and continues on all fours for the rest of the way.

The magical fireworks go up as she crashes into the base in a heap of limbs and fur; she _made_ it.

She lays panting for a small time, clutching the little red sash in her again-human hands. Even when Lincoln, human himself now, appears and beams down at her, grabbing at her hand and bringing her to her feet.

“Good game,” he says.

And then Clarke is there, fizzling into existence and hanging onto Lexa like a koala and pressing a sloppy kiss into Lexa’s cheek and holding her hand up and taunting at the rest of them; tens of similarly aged children, that _her_ team won.

And Lexa is enamored with Clarke and in such childish love and so—

* * *

“I thought I told you to stop doing that.”

“I’m a monster,” Lexa says (deadpans really), letting her eyes open to stare at the ceiling, “I remember a game— capture the flag?”

Clarke smiles and nods and reaches out to take Lexa’s hand, “Yeah, that was the last time I saw you, actually. Your Mother caught us on the way back and threatened us, threatened me, really, for telling you that it was okay to be yourself. You’re not a monster, Lexa.”

“I’m a werewolf.”

The laugh that bubbles from Clarke is such a familiar and beautiful sound that it leaves Lexa’s heart aching for hours afterwards, “No,” she says, “No you’re a changeling, actually. You were just _obsessed_ with wolves as a kid and Mom encouraged you to be a werewolf, if you wanted.”

“I— How did I forget—”

“Your Mother cursed you, _literally_. And then my Mom cursed _her_ , because she was going to do it to me too. And then. You were gone. Both of you.”

If Lexa closes her eyes and takes deep breaths and lets herself flow back through her memories, she _thinks_ she can see them, all those years ago. Thinks she can even hear the very curse her Mother placed over her; tying her to a life not truly her own. Thinks that, the _only_ reason that they moved so much and so often was because the curse was wearing off and Clarke’s mother— Abby was _so_ close to finding them.

She feels the tears strike at her cheeks and the angry swell in her chest; but Clarke is _here_ and Clarke is warm and soft and giving and wrapping herself around Lexa like she’s the only thing that matters. Pulling herself in close as if that they hadn’t been separated for twenty-odd years.

“I missed you,” Clarke supplies, nuzzling into Lexa’s neck.

And Lexa takes a heavy, gratifying breath and lets her arms wrap around Clarke’s form and holds her close and bury her nose in Clarke’s blackberry-smelling hair.

“I missed you too, Clarke.”


	4. Back In Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> does this count as back in time? hope so. (this is unedited, so catch these gay hands doing small edits later)
> 
> its a little long, but actually it kind of works for how corny it is.
> 
> catch me over at my tumblr [@bestheda](http://bestheda.tumblr.com/) there's an accompanying moodboard to this story there :)
> 
> based on the prompts from [@clextober](https://clextober.tumblr.com/)

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

She is meticulous about this because it gives her _exactly_ the right amount of time to get everything done before she leaves for work.

Get up. Put on gym gear. Harness dog. Leash dog. Go for thirty minute jog. Return home. Feed and water dog. Shower. Put makeup on. Do hair. Get dressed. Make oatmeal with fruit. Eat oatmeal. Wash dishes. Pat dog goodbye. Leave apartment. Buy a cup of coffee at the place on the corner. Arrive at the station in time to pull out a borrowed library book and read 3.5 pages before the train arrives.

That is Lexa’s morning. It has been Lexa’s morning for the past six years. And she _refuses_ to budge from it. Which is approximately half the reason Costia broke up with her some months prior; the other half being that she’s actually just kind of a shit girlfriend, if she’s honest.

Lexa lives and breathes order. Lexa lives and breathes routine. Lexa doesn’t know how _not_ to live without either of those things. Lexa isn’t officially on the spectrum but she thinks she might as well be. Lexa is bad at talking with people and bad with physical touch and bad with well— a lot of things, actually. But Lexa is a _really_ good editor and Lexa makes her company a lot of good money. So she isn’t all bad.

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 and goes about her routine and it’s all fine, it’s all _great_ actually, until the coffee shop. Because her favourite server isn’t working today and she doesn’t like giving her order to people she doesn’t know. And that throws her off.

But Bellamy, his name tag reads, is nice enough and he’s obviously worked here before because he knows her order already. And she doesn’t even need to speak, she just hands the cash over and forces a smile in thanks and takes her warm travel mug and continues outside.

Or she would. But a flash of blonde and a splash of color catches her attention.

Because holed up in the corner of the cafe is a beautiful young woman surrounded by art supplies, dipping brushes between paint and water and moving color across a canvas as if she is a master of it.

Lexa thrives on routine. And when she chances a glance at her watch she sees she’s running late for the train. She curses under her breath and makes a run for it.

Her whole day is thrown off from the little moment she allowed herself to be distracted. And she detests herself for it.

And when she falls into bed later that night, she shuts her eyes and thinks of the beautiful array of color and promises herself that tomorrow will be better.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

Lexa wakes and goes about her routine and on the way back from the dog park she steps in gum and suffers for it the rest of the walk back. She tries not to dwell on it for the sake of order.

Today should be _fine_ and today should be _good,_ she tells herself. But when she arrives at the small corner cafe, her favourite server isn’t working again. But Bellamy grins lazily at her and hands over her coffee and tells her to have a nice day.

And on the way out the door she catches sight of the blonde again, holed up in her corner, painting that same beautiful array of color. But Lexa can’t dally, so she scuttles off and makes it in time to sit and read before the train arrives.

Her day is not thrown off today. She kept to her routine— mostly. But something feels off. As if the words on the page are the same ones she corrected yesterday. But that can’t be right, because why would they send it back to her? She’s meticulous and perfect. A very good editor. But she does it again anyway and sends it off.

And when she falls into bed later that night she takes a deep breath and promises _(promises)_ that she will not stop to look at the blonde and the color, because it’s just a distraction and it’s ruining her mood.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

On her walk back from the dog park she skips around the place she stepped in gum the day prior and instead catches, from the corner of her eye, the florist she always watches, cutting back the same lot of flowers she was the day before. And the day before that, actually, if Lexa thinks about it. Flowers don’t need that much care, she’ll kill them otherwise.

Lexa doesn’t tell her that though. Lexa returns back to the apartment and gets dressed and brushes her teeth and pulls her hair into a lazy cute bun and makes her way to the coffee shop.

Bellamy already knows her order and she takes it with a nod and turns and _very purposefully_ tries not to look at the corner of the shop. But she does. And it does her head in. Because there the girl is again. Painting. And of course it’s the _same_ damn picture.

And she has to ask. She does. Who would paint the same thing three days in a row?

“Why that picture?” she says, startling the blonde only slightly.

“Oh,” they reply, beaming up at her and tucking a strand of hair behind their ear, “It’s a view of the sky from the Mojave. Do you like it?”

“Yes,” Lexa says, very curtly, “Why three days in a row though?”

And the girl twists her eyebrows and looks slightly affronted but shakes her head and says, “I— you might be mistaking me with someone else I’m afraid. I only arrived this morning. My friend, Bellamy, is covering for our mutual friend, Raven?”

“No. No I’m quite sure I saw you here yesterday, and the day before that too.”

“Nope,” the stranger says with a chuckle, “Promise you, it wasn’t me. I only got back from Cali today.”

Lexa’s watch beeps at her and she balks and apologizes very quickly before running off.

She’s _so_ very late.

She has _never_ arrived late for work. And when she apologizes profusely about her lateness her boss just laughs and tells her not to worry; five minutes is nothing.

But it is to Lexa. It is _everything_ to Lexa.

And when she settles into her office and pulls up today’s workload, she finds the same _fucking_ paper from the previous day, as if it hadn’t been edited properly a Second Time. And she growls and slams her coffee down; and does the work anyway.

And on the way out the door she catches sight of the calendar and remarks to her boss that it’s the thirtieth of October and spends a moment considering the trick-or-treaters she’ll likely get.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

Yesterday had thrown her off so much though that she lays in bed for a few moments longer than needed before slipping into her gym gear and leashing her dog and doing a quick walk around the block.

When she sees the florist working on the same batch of flowers, she gets an eerie feeling in her stomach and trudges back home _very_ quickly.

She manages to reach the coffee house on time and Bellamy prepares her order and she glances over and sees the corner artist, painting the same piece and she swallows and takes her coffee and leaves.

And when she gets into work and sits and takes a breath and opens the folder and finds the same workload from yesterday she winces and hangs her head and shuffles back out and looks at the calendar and sure enough—

“October thirtieth?” she questions out loud, “What the fuck?”

She _never_ swears out loud. It’s rude and uncouth. And Harper, one of her workmates, snorts water and laughs and chokes out a, “Yeah. Years going way too fast, huh?”

Lexa doesn’t reply. Lexa just shuffles back into her office and sits and considers what the _hell_ is going on.

She thinks she saw a movie about this once. Maybe. One with Bill something-or-another. But she can’t be sure and she’s too anxious to pull up Google and find out.

Her boss lets her go home sick, even though she’s not; because Lexa is a very valuable and good employee and her boss is actually a really nice person.

Instead she returns to the coffee shop and Bellamy startles at her presence and remarks how he’s never seen her twice in a row before, and she smiles and takes her coffee and goes and sits in the opposite corner to the artist girl.

She cradles her hot drink and watches and watches and watches.

And when the coffee shop calls close, she trudges out and back home and lays in bed awake for far, _far,_ too long.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

And when she wakes at 5:05 today she checks her phone for the date and finds it blaring an, _‘October 30th’_ at her. And she turns it off and clutches it to her head and sighs.

She spends _that_ day in bed, sulking and afraid.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

_October 30th_ blares back at her from the angry white glow of her phone.

She crawls out of bed at 6:05 and leashes her dog and dresses in comfortable clothes and instead of preparing for work, because what’s the point anyway? She sits in at the cafe and lets Jasper, the stupid dog, have multiple doggie-lattes. And she eats breakfast there for the first time _ever_. And it’s not the worst thing she’s ever done.

The artist must come in before it opens because she’s already setup and painting by the time Lexa is eating breakfast. And it’s the same Mojave desert scene and Lexa shakes her head because it’s beautiful and colorful and everything right the world; but it’ll never be finished at this rate.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

_October 30th_ blares back at her from the angry white glow of her phone.

She follows her routine this day, mostly.

She ends up at the coffee shop dressed for work but doesn’t continue any further.

Instead she takes her coffee from Bellamy and quietly murmurs for a blueberry muffin and sits over in the girl’s corner and watches her paint.

Lexa might not even bother existing with how deeply the girl is concentrating. But eventually she sighs and reaches up to scratch at her mess of blonde hair and take stock of her surroundings.

And like those days before (or, maybe not the right term, considering), she startles and looks at Lexa and then to Bellamy over at the cafe. And Lexa just smiles.

“Hi,” the stranger says, “Uhh. Sorry am I in your favourite seat?”

“No,” Lexa replies with a little smile, “I just like watching you work.”

“Oh!” and the stranger has such a nice little laugh that it makes Lexa’s belly flop in a way that Costia’s never did, “Thanks! I dropped out of med school for it, so it _better_ be good.”

“You were going to med school?”

“Yeah. My Mom wanted me to be a doctor, like her. But you know how sometimes things just call to you? Well doing Art was my calling.”

“It’s very beautiful,” Lexa admits and ignores the feeling of her chest getting all tight and tingly, “The Mojave?”

“Gosh yeah, I’m glad it looks like it! I’m Clarke, by the way, Clarke Griffin,” and she holds her hand out and Lexa stares at it, because she can’t really bring herself to touch the stranger, as much as she wants to.

At least Clarke seems smart or empathetic or something because she must sense the change in Lexa and shrugs and drops her hand, “Not big on touching?”

“No. Sorry.”

“All good. Neither is my brother, Aden.”

Lexa spends the rest of the day caught up in conversation and coffee and ignoring the missed calls on her phone and when she stumbles back into her apartment at seven, she feels more free than she ever has done.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

She spends a few days _not_ going to the cafe.

Instead she sees parts of Baltimore she’s never seen before. Visiting monuments and buildings and galleries and museums. And she buys flowers from the florist and compliments her hair, which she’s always been _dying_ to do.

And she listens to music and goes hiking with her dog instead of just to the dog park. And tries her hand at painting and art, which she finds she sucks at.

And one day she calls Costia and asks her why they broke up; and when Costia laughs and says that it’s because Lexa was too rigid and stuck in a rut; Lexa apologizes. But Costia has moved on and Lexa kind of has to, so it’s okay. They promise to meet up for lunch another day, anyway. But when Lexa wakes the next morning and finds the angry glare of _‘October 30th’_ staring back at her, she knows that won’t happen.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

She arrives at the cafe before opening and sits with Jasper on the step out front and keeps her hands warm by shoving them under her arms.

Clarke arrives a little while later with Bellamy who twists his brow together but shrugs and Clarke introduces herself as if she hasn’t before and Lexa introduces herself, too.

They spend _that_ day discussing art history and theory and Lexa pays for Clarke’s drinks and laughs at Clarke’s bad jokes; and at the end of the day, Clarke gives her a peck on the cheek and moves off into the truck with Bellamy and Lexa goes home.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

She spends a few days. A week, really. Deliberating on what the cause of the time loop is. And she spends a few days reading at the library on physics and math and science that she just absolutely does not understand and can’t ever hope to grasp.

She does however find out that a movie _does_ exist that almost-describes her situation. But she’s not rude and pig headed and hateful of humanity. She’s just Lexa; stuck in a rut.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

_October 30th_ blares back at her from the angry white glow of her phone.

It’s been _well_ over fifty iterations of it so far, she thinks. But she goes about her routine as normal and arrives at the cafe at her regular time and spends the precious minutes she’d have wasted reading a book instead of looking at Clarke’s painting.

And when Clarke looks up she smiles down at the now-stranger and introduces herself and Clarke does too and she compliments her on her painting of the Mojave and Clarke _beams_ that the scenery is recognizable.

She goes to work and does the same editing job she’s done before and goes home.

And she hopes that she’s done something right today, because, truthfully, she’s kind of sick of this.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

_October 30th_ blares back at her from the angry white glow of her phone.

She buries her head in her pillow and _screams._

She forgets her routine and stalks to the cafe earlier than usual and Clarke is already set up but she doesn’t _care_ . She interrupts the beautiful blonde and asks if she wants to go on a date, because why the _fuck_ not.

And when Clarke says that she’s free tomorrow, Lexa shakes her head and pitifully kind of begs it to be today, because she’s trying to get a good excuse to skip out on work. And Clarke laughs her beautiful little laugh and agrees and stashes her supplies in the backroom of the cafe.

Lexa doesn’t even get her customary coffee. Instead she drinks some disgusting iced concoction that Clarke gets and they walk about the parks and the streets and stop in at Lexa’s favourite little diner and Clarke tells her all about her trip to Cali and Lexa listens and pretends like she hasn’t already heard it all before.

Before they depart, back at the cafe, Lexa pulls Clarke aside and sighs and says, “What would you say if I told you I was stuck in a time loop and we’ve done this like a million times already?”

And Clarke laughs again and looks red at the cheeks before shaking her head, “Then I hope you’ll keep doing it a million times more,” and kisses Lexa on the cheek, so very close to her mouth, and moves off and away.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

_October 30th_ blares back at her from the angry white glow of her phone.

She just wishes _someone_ would tell her what the _fuck_ is up, because it’s getting old. She feels old.

When she trudges to the cafe in her gym gear, sweaty and disgusting and Jasper being doe-eyed in the hopes of doggie-lattes. She orders something out of the ordinary and introduces herself to Clarke and Clarke flushes _bright red_ and ducks her head and gives her name back.

She watches Clarke for _way_ too long and for the first time since the loop began, the picture changes from the Mojave to some kind of setting sun over lush green; and halfway through, Lexa realizes it’s the color of her eyes. And when Clarke bashfully looks up at her she smiles back and compliments the painting and Clarke flushes even darker than before.

She’s momentarily stunned when Clarke offers to walk her back to her apartment after close and even more stunned when _she_ decides to ask Clarke to come up for coffee.

And Clarke settles into her minimalistic space like she belongs there and looks at Lexa and shifts against the soft black of the couch and holds her warm mug to her nose.

“You’re really dense, you know?” Clarke says after a long beat of silence and Lexa looks at her, offended and setback, “Sorry, you really are.”

“When I say coffee I really do mean just coffee, sorry to disappoint.”

“No. Idiot. It’s just— I really thought it was me at first,” Clarke continues with a dry little laugh, “But then you started changing things up and I couldn’t help but watch. And I thought I was causing it but I wasn’t, you’re just stuck here too, and to be honest you’re way too cute.”

And Lexa furrows her brow and cocks her head. And it takes _far_ too long to sink in what Clarke means and then all of a sudden she chokes and sputters out, “The loop?”

And Clarke is laughing and nodding and sipping at her lukewarm coffee, “Yeah. Really anticlimactic that there’s two of us, I know. And I thought we’d never find a way out. But yesterday, you told me about the loop and I thought you were stupid as shit to not realize I was stuck there too; it’s why I changed things up today.”

And it all falls into place for Lexa. All the missed little things. The way the days she attends the cafe Clarke tries _very_ hard not to look up and smile and beam; even more so when she introduces herself to Clarke. And then she remembers the painting on the third day and Clarke denying it; the liar. Or maybe not a liar, maybe this day forced Clarke’s hand as much as her own.

“Wanna have sex?” Clarke asks very bluntly and Lexa’s eyes nearly pop out of her head, “Don’t give me that look. We’ve been tiptoeing around it for like, I don’t know, a couple of months now. If we’re going to be stuck in a loop forever I at least want to get laid.”

Clarke is _way_ too pretty and way too convincing. And Lexa hates being touched. But Lexa likes being touched by Clarke, so when Clarke mentions sex, Lexa’s head misfires and short circuits and she’s pretty sure _she’s_ the one initiating things.

Sex with Clarke is _good._ Really good, actually. The best Lexa has ever had. And she still doesn’t like being touched by people, but Clarke sprawling her smaller form over her back is a nice exception. And Clarke kissing the shell of her ear is another. And Clarke cupping at breasts and kneading the flesh there gently is another.

And Lexa thinks, at least if they’re stuck in this loop; that they she has Clarke for company.

* * *

Lexa wakes at precisely 5:05 every day.

On the dot.

She wakes and tries to tap her alarm off but a heavy weight is pinning her down and when she pivots she finds Clarke koalaed around her and her face buried in Lexa’s neck and a warm hand pressed against her navel.

And she has just enough wiggle room to reach for her phone and an angry _‘October 31st — Happy Halloween’_ glares back at her.

“Clarke,” she says, shaking the form the girl behind her awake, _“Clarke”_

The blonde grunts unhappily and smacks Lexa’s bright little orb from her hand and buries her face in Lexa’s hair and moans a, “What?”

“It’s October 31st.”

“Mm, yeah, Halloween. I know, Lexa.”

“It’s our anniversary, you ass.”

“It’s 5am, Lex,” Clarke whines and presses more of her weight against Lexa, “We can do our anniversary later.”

And Lexa really should argue more. She should. But she doesn't. Because Clarke is soft and giving and warm and pulls the blankets back up around their shoulders and kisses Lexa’s neck and whispers a little ‘I love you’ against the skin found there.

And Lexa settles back into the warmth of her bed and Jasper joins them shortly after, doing circles at their feet until he finds his comfortable spot.

And Lexa thinks back on the years that were; and there _were_ years.

Waking up on October 31st years and years ago; assaulted by numerous calls from her boss and her friends and her workmates. And Clarke was there, startled and beautiful in the early morning sunrise; because they’d broken out of their loop by _having sex_ . Which Clarke thought was _hilarious._

But Lexa knows better. So does Clarke but she likes the running joke that sex saved their lives. Lexa knows that they broke out of the loop because she finds a messy kind of love in Clarke that doesn’t line up with her routine or her order or her personal way; but makes her stomach flip and her heart clench and her face turn red. And Clarke finds an orderly, beautiful kind of love in Lexa back.

“Happy anniversary, groundhog,” Clarke mumbles sleepily against her skin and Lexa feels the laugh bubble up in her throat.


	5. Costume Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> modern AU again!!
> 
> this is the one i think i struggled most with, because we don't celebrate Halloween where i live and i've never been to a halloween costume party literally ever lol.
> 
> anyway enjoy!!
> 
> catch me over at my tumblr [@bestheda](http://bestheda.tumblr.com/) for the moodboard and for other gay bs
> 
> based on the prompts from [@clextober](https://clextober.tumblr.com/)

Clarke likes to think she’s actually a really perceptive person. Which she is, but sometimes she likes to remind herself she is, too.

So when, during the annual workplace Halloween party, there is a distinct lack of CEO, Clarke notices before anybody else.

She also notices when the CEO’s assistants begin to notice that the CEO isn’t actually here, anymore. Not here _anymore._ Because she _was_ here. Up until a half hour ago, that is.

Everyone is dressed and costumed and having an absolute blast and nobody except Clarke and the assistants (who should have dressed as headless chickens, if Clarke’s honest) even notice that the CEO goes missing.

This is hilarious to Clarke because, other than the annual Christmas party, seeing Lexa Woods outside of work-proper is next to impossible. And these events are always the best time to corner her and try to become buddy-buddy. _Try_ being the keyword. Because Lexa Woods is apparently _notoriously_ difficult to get along with outside of work or events like these (apparently).

Clarke really should help. She should. She had seen where Lexa went, after all. But she doesn’t. She just smiles and shakes her head and tips back the rest of her whiskey sour and leans back against the bar and watches.

“Lexa’s gone missing,” a voice says beside her, the owner of which flops over the bar and pours themselves another beer, “Check out her assistants.”

“Yeah,” Clarke replies, “She’s been gone for thirty minutes or so. You know, open bar doesn't mean you can pour your own drinks, Raven.”

The thief (literally, Raven’s dressed as a thief) slides back over the table, grinning wickedly and sips from her (far too over-frothed) beer and falls in beside Clarke, “Bellamy doesn’t care. Too busy hittin' on Echo.”

Clarke doesn’t need to look to know that Raven’s right. Not that Bellamy actually _needs_ to hit on Echo; they’d been married for something like four years. But Echo found it endearing and Bellamy is still _very much_ in love with her, so it happened every time Bellamy so much as runs into his wife.

“Ten bucks says Lexa’s ditched and run out the back door,” Raven continues with a little chuckle, “She’s always hated these kinda shindigs.”

“Yeah. But Lexa loves Halloween,” Clarke remarks, “Remember college?”

Raven barks a laugh and nods and nearly spills her beer because she’s more than a little tipsy and it takes all of Clarke’s willpower not to snatch the beer from her and cut her off for the rest of the night. But Raven deserves tonight as much as anyone; as much as any of their friend group, really.

* * *

_Woods Innovations_ is Lexa’s baby. Thought up in high school, a vague conversation between friends. Then later designed in college as part of Lexa’s business degree. And then made reality some year or so post-graduation; the eclectic group of misfitted graduates from _Polis_ somehow scraping together enough cash and willpower and knowledge among all of them to actually plant the seed and let it grow.

It started out solely as a disability start-up; something to provide cheap, easy to make and customize prosthetics, and affordable personal medical and assistive devices. Anything from orthopedics to hearing aids to wheelchairs to adaptive technologies. Pioneered and headed by Lexa; who grew up in a house among six other disabled foster children, and later somehow fell into being friends with Raven who called herself an invalid (once) and made Lexa cry.

But the company filled a part in society that was sorely lacking and eventually bloomed to be what it is today. A multi-million dollar company with a presence in fifty different countries and catering for God only knows how many clients worldwide; all while keeping the prices of everything reasonably low, because Lexa demanded it so.

And the misinformation that Lexa is _notoriously_ difficult to get along with outside of company get togethers? Is just that. Misinformation. Lexa is just hard-of hearing and kind of blunt. And her friend group is already sizeable so why would she want anymore?

* * *

“Who’s the dog?” Raven asks, smacking Clarke’s arm and jutting her chin out towards the crowd.

Bad question wording, Clarke thinks, because plenty of the branch employees have service dogs. But no, Raven’s right. A dog suit is moving through the crowd and letting people flock around it for photos and squeak its nose and beg for a cuddle. And Clarke tries to remember if there is some kind of weird furry convention going on nearby but comes up blank.

“Dunno. I think I see your girlfriend looking for you, though,” Clarke replies, spotting Anya tiptoeing and peering over the crowd.

In her peripheral she watches Raven balk before quickly chugging the rest of her beer (as if she couldn’t just take it with her) and feels a messy, wet set of lips press a kiss into the side of her head and then her friend is drunkenly shoving her way back through the crowd.

Clarke likes working here. She’s got her Father’s brain and her Mother’s desire to help people and her own artistic talent, which culminates into her being absolutely stellar at designing prosthetics. And maybe this isn’t where she imagined life would take her, but she’d never wish for anything different now that she has it.

“Ooh good fursuit,” Bellamy says, startling her slightly as he passes off another whiskey sour without being asked, “Where’s Lady Boss Lexa?”

Clarke shrugs and smiles at him and watches the dog-furry-thing try to detach itself from the middle of a group of (very drunk) employees, “Raven’s bet ten that she’s bailed.”

“Eh. Nah. I’d put ten on her having gone back up to work on a new project.”

“You’d lose,” Clarke supplies, “Pour me a cider, Bell.”

Cider is Lexa’s favourite drink. She doesn’t even need to specify _which_ cider, because Bellamy already knows who she wants it for and pours it as such; even leaving the customary two-finger gap at the top of the chilled tall glass, because Lexa won’t drink it otherwise.

And Clarke takes the drink and looks at the dog-thing across the room and shakes her head and moves away from the crowd and out the side door.

* * *

The center courtyard is one of Clarke’s favourite places.

When she found out that the headquarters were going to be set amongst the woodlands of Maryland, Clarke was absolutely ecstatic and demanded a small community garden to be built in the very center and Lexa, being a _very good_ friend, folded to those demands (not that it took much begging).

Even tonight, on the eve of Halloween, surrounded by spooky decorations _someone_ had setup weeks ago, it’s still a beautiful little secluded zone that Clarke finds solace and a moment of quiet in.

Her favourite tree is the almost-central white oak; a beautiful thing Lexa had uprooted and moved and planted here in the first year of the headquarters opening. And Clarke easily finds it in the semi-dark and settles her back against it and puts the whiskey sour and the cider on the ground and closes her eyes.

If she strains her ears enough she can still hear the music from the hall, and the wandering voices of drunken employees and security guards shepherding them out.

“Have you seen your assistants?” she asks after a beat of silence; talking as much with her hands as with her voice, “They’re running around like mad.”

A heavy chuckle comes from a little way off and suddenly a lump of thick, soft fabric tumbles down beside Clarke, as if whoever it is can’t remember how to sit. It’s not helped by the fact it’s dark, Clarke’s sure. But then she feels a (very large) fuzzy hand reach out and touch her leg.

“Yes,” a voice answers, accented and panting, “It’s hot.”

“Can’t believe you wore that,” Clarke laughs and opens her eyes and comes face to face with the stupid furry dog suit, “Where did you even get it? Can you even _see_ to read signs?”

“Twitter. And no. Not really.”

“Take the head off, Lexa.”

Clarke watches her struggle for a moment, fat pink-padded paws trying to find purchase on the head before finally managing to get it off. And she really shouldn't laugh at her boss, she shouldn’t. But Lexa is panting and covered in sweat and red at the cheeks and ears and throat and beaming at Clarke like it isn’t the dumbest thing she’s ever done.

Lexa _never_ dresses up for company Halloween parties. Lexa never dresses up for _anything._ Lexa’s notorious for wearing black tie even when it’s not required. Not that she doesn’t look good in black tie, she’s just a spoil sport and kind of thrives on people being disappointed, Clarke thinks.

“You’re cute,” Clarke says one-handed, picking the cider up with her free hand to pass to Lexa, watching her guzzle it like water.

“Why didn’t they just ask _you_ where I went?” Lexa asks after finishing half the tall glass in one go, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“I’m not a mind-reader _._ _You_ didn’t tell me where you were going.”

“Yes I did.”

“No you absolutely did not, Alexandria Griffin-Woods,” Clarke says, heavily enunciating each word with her hands for extra emphasis.

Clarke never calls Lexa by her full name. She hasn’t called Lexa by her full name since their marriage some six years ago and even then it was only because the court demanded it of her.

“Oh,” Lexa says and blushes deeper and buries her chin against her collar, “Sorry.”

“Idiot,” Clarke says and leans forward and presses a kiss against Lexa’s salty cheek, “Ew. You’re so sweaty.”

“I love you,” Lexa says and shuffles and leans her head against Clarke’s shoulder, wet hair pressing up against Clarke’s cheek (not that she minds), “We should go back.”

“Nah. Let them fret a bit longer. This is nice.”

* * *

The Monday after Halloween weekend has the workplace in an uproar.

Bellamy sends collected photos to Raven who sends them to Jasper who sends them to Murphy who (without permission) puts them all up on the private company Facebook page. An overwhelming amount of them contain the mystery dog suit and nearly _everyone_ has an opinion on who it is though nobody is coming forward.

More than one person say they recognize the suit and tag some strangers Twitter, which Clarke finds _hilarious_ and goes to personally thank them. And they tell her that they’re more than happy to have the publicity (and the cash, Clarke finds out, a fair wad of cash).

She slides into Lexa’s office during lunch, clutching two lots of Lexa’s favourite sushi and puts them down and shoves her phone at Lexa; watching her give a wicked little smile at all the photos.

“You should do that more often,” Clarke says, juggling her chopsticks to sign, “Then drop the ball one year, watch people scramble.”

Lexa’s laugh has always been Clarke’s favourite thing about her. The way it makes her stomach flip and tumble and her heart beat faster; even years after first hearing it. She loves Lexa wholly, but she _adores_ Lexa’s laugh.

And Clarke likes to think she’s actually a really perceptive person. Which she is, but sometimes she likes to remind herself she is, too.

So when Lexa passes her phone back, done scrolling the photos, Clarke doesn’t miss the little gleam in those green eyes, or the open tabs on her computer showing Santa suits for sale.


	6. Vampires/Werewolves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me , screaming and banging my pans together : soulmates soulmates soulmates soulmates soulmates
> 
> this is, in part, a homage to my fave clexa fic: [move on me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3267515/chapters/7125512) by [caelzorah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caelzorah/pseuds/caelzorah)
> 
> i hope you enjoy it!!
> 
> catch me over at my tumblr [@bestheda](http://bestheda.tumblr.com/) for a moodboard or a chat or something!
> 
> based on the prompts from [@clextober](https://clextober.tumblr.com/)

Modern-day movies kind of get it right.

Vampires and Werewolves are never friends.

Sometimes they pretend to be _friendly_. Sometimes they elect to work together. Sometimes even, they mold and build and shape mortal cities; and then not centuries later one or both will viciously tear them down.

But they are _never_ friends. Never true allies. Never more than an inch away from ripping one another's entrails out and smearing their entire people through time and space.

* * *

These are the facts. The basic way of life.

Vampires and Werewolves are never friends.

The first time Lexa meets Clarke, those aren’t their names.

* * *

Lexa is Ἀλέξανδρος. _Alexandros._ Named for the Goddess Hera. Set to be the next ruler of the largest Vampire imperium pre-Rome.

Clarke is not Clarke or Ó Cléirigh or Cétchathach. She instead has no name. She is a number. A brand. A symbol that signifies a not-slave but not-free either. Clarke is the product of a failed war.

She is a gift to Lexa, to Alexandros, as part of the peace agreement between their two people. Because Lexa has always wanted after a pup. And Clarke is among the most beautiful.

Clarke is golden furred and yellow eyed and has paws as big as Lexa’s whole head. Clarke is set to be a Queen among her people, they tell Lexa. And Lexa treats her so; for it would not do to treat a not-slave badly, Lexa thinks.

In her human form Clarke is as fierce as her wolf. Clarke is blue-eyed with hair the color of straw. And Clarke spits in her face and pulls at her chains and snarls and snaps but never harms.

She is freed some two hundred years later; when Clarke’s people raise an army and tear through the empire walls and kills an equal amount of Vampires to Wolves from their last war.

Lexa survives because Clarke demands it.

Lexa survives because Clarke has the burden of a leader, same as her.

* * *

Clarke takes a proper name by the late Bronze Age.

She hears the name in passing and kills its owner and their entire village and calls herself Guðríðr; _beautiful god._

Lexa gets word of this and laughs with her belly and means to congratulate the she-wolf, but never gets the chance.

In this age their wars are brutal and plentiful and Lexa must take up arms against the she-wolf's clan lest she be ousted as her people’s Queen.

She spares Clarke, this go around.

Lexa still presses her fangs to human-Clarke’s throat and feels the blood pumping through Clarke’s veins but does not bite.

Instead she scrapes her teeth at the soft skin there and pulls back and undoes Clarke’s chains and offers her freedom.

Clarke gives herself pause and regards Lexa but she is a leader, so she rallies her people and runs and does not look back.

* * *

When the Bronze Age collapses and the Iron Age takes hold, their wars change.

They still fight among each other. But they too begin to fight with the mortals that surround them.

Humans are not a kind or thoughtful race; not yet.

Humans take up swords of folded metal and run them through their comrades each. And when they find that the metal does not harm them; not the same way that tooth and claw and fang does; Werewolf and Vampire alike work together to rid themselves of their warring mortal pests.

Clarke gets word of her people forming skirmishes with the Vampires on the Southern Front and laughs in her belly and thinks of sending a pup to Lexa as a show of camaraderie.

She doesn’t.

* * *

Rome is as beautiful and mighty and sprawling as History will say it is.

Rome never quite makes its way into Clarke’s peoples territory; too cold and desolate. Hostile. Unliveable.

Clarke’s people ally themselves with the Slavs and the Balts and the Sarmatians; both in human and in wolf. And Clarke travels between packs and towns and villages and she earns a name and a history with these people as the _God of Death._

Clarke moves and kills and moves and kills; staining her golden fur and hair and skin with blood and gore and a fetid stench.

Lexa, now _Alexander,_ gets word of this in her haven of Rome and her stomach roils and her hands sweat and she thinks that something so beautiful does not deserve such a epithet.

They do not get a chance to meet face to face again until Rome falls centuries later.

She flees her people East and North and South; away from Rome. Away from Greece. Away. _Away._

Lexa stays though.

Lexa stays and stands and watches Odoacer, leader of the Germanics and the hand of Constantinople, push the sword through the throat of the last Roman Emperor, Romulus.

Lexa stands by but does not watch the bloodshed or murder and instead trains her eyes on the great golden wolf at Odoacer’s side.

And when the conqueror faces her and asks for her to take a knee, Lexa spits at his feet and the only thing that stops him running her through is the sword-hand he nearly loses to Clarke’s vicious jaws.

Lexa walks with Clarke to the nearest forest and twists her hands in Clarke’s golden fur and looks at the gleaming yellow eyes and presses a kiss to wolf-Clarke’s head.

And in the next blink, she is gone.

* * *

These are the facts. The basic way of life.

Vampires and Werewolves are never friends.

Lexa and Clarke’s alliances shift and change and morph as the times demand.

But they are never friends.

* * *

Lexa and her people travel for a long while; never quite settling.

Lexa sees coalitions and empires and whole people start and build and fall and she does nothing but she is blamed.

A name for her people that all humans agree on has not come about and will not for some centuries yet. Blood-drinker. Human-eater. Demon. Spirit. They are all the same but there are many different words and Lexa does not like any of them.

Clarke’s people have had theirs for a great deal already and she hears it the same on every tongue; _varúlfur._ Werewolf. Lycan. It doesn’t matter, they are the same people, the same beasts, the same creatures of folklore and horror.

Lexa spreads her kind to each corner of the globe and picks up names as they go.

She spreads and flies and lives in Italy, Romania, Russia, Mongolia and eventually settles in China.

China is beautiful and grand and clean and there they call her and her kind _jiangshi_ and she adopts the word for a long while because it’s by far the most pleasant of the lot.

She hears of Clarke through the proverbial grapevine; settled with the Mongols in the North. And against the advice of her Counsel, travels alone to see the she-wolf.

By the time she reaches the remote camps, the wolf is gone.

Lexa loses count of the years she searches.

* * *

Clarke finds herself and her people swept up in conflict after conflict.

Humans still are not a kind or thoughtful race; not yet.

Humans learn that silver is effective against her kind. Against Lexa’s kind too, but Clarke does not find that out until years after the fact.

Silver does not kill them. Nothing can kill them, Clarke thinks; nothing except vampires.

But silver leaves them listless and tired and useless in war. Silver swords and daggers and arrowheads leave scars that never quite heal. Silver turns many of Clarke’s kind from human to wolf or wolf to human without permission or order or control.

Clarke hates silver.

She saves a litter of pups from the grab-bags of vampire-allied humans and earns a nasty scar across her back. And another at her gut.

She razes an entire section of a country for causing this harm; Humans and Vampires alike.

The epithet of _God of Death_ follows her still.

* * *

Wars with the mystical die out.

Humans turn on each other instead.

The uprising in late 1700’s France brings them together; if only briefly.

Clarke works for the People and Lexa works for the Throne.

Lexa knows the she-wolf is in the country, has heard tales of the straw-blonde _bitch;_ the monarchy speak of her as if she is a pest to be squashed and it takes all of Lexa’s self-restraint not to bleed them dry.

Clarke knows Alexander is in the country; or not Alexander, _Alexandre._ It does not flow as well off the tongue and leaves Clarke discontent.

She has not taken a name for herself in centuries; not since the name Guðríðr was replaced with God of Death. But in passing she hears the name of Claude and follows a man home and kills him and takes his name; she is sick of being a title and not the person behind it.

They meet each other when Lexa is travelling with the still-loyal military.

They meet when Clarke or Claude, though neither is keeping track, approaches their camp intent on bringing death. And Clarke smells Lexa before she sees her and feels her gut swell with anger and viciousness and something that she can’t quite place.

They meet when Lexa meets her halfway and they smile and Lexa embraces Clarke and tells her of how much she has missed the she-wolf's presence. And Clarke relaxes into the hold as if she is a dog returned to their lost friend and master.

Lexa stands by and watches as Clarke murders the camp of soldiers she is to be loyal to and reaches out and takes Clarke hand after she is done.

They bathe together in a freezing river and Lexa sees the nasty jagged scar across Clarke’s back and stomach and shares her own with Clarke in return. And after they are clean, Lexa presses another kiss to Clarke’s head, human this time, and promises to meet her again when the war is over.

They don’t.

* * *

These are the facts. The basic way of life.

Vampires and Werewolves are never friends.

Lexa and Clarke change names and morph and they live lives less of their brethren past and more of the Human’s who manage find their footing as time progresses.

But they are never friends.

* * *

Clarke disappears to the America’s and lives amongst her western kind; finding kinship but not family and helps them fight those from Europe as if they are a plague to be dealt with.

Lexa disappears East and finds a home in Ukraine and Romania and Belarus and Latvia. Lexa hears the term _vampyre_ for the first time and calls a summit with her eleven fellow leaders and they agree that this is now their kinds name. It fits and flows and Lexa loves it.

Clarke reads a book, pillaged from a now dead western community, and finds tales of Lexa’s kind and sees the name and laughs. The blood-drinkers of Europe. Folklore that treads the line between reality and not.

* * *

The twentieth century is the least kind to all three races.

The twentieth century brings war and famine and death that Lexa never quite forgets the smell or sight or taste of.

The Humans call it the Great War; and Lexa thinks they’re probably right.

She does not expect to meet Clarke amongst it all and yet she does.

Clarke is a healer, trained and certified and intensely good. Lexa knows it’s because she has senses humans sorely lack.

Clarke is working deep in the front lines and gains the epithet of _God of Death_ again. But not for what she kills.

For in the Great War, she seems to skim around Death like it is her friend, surviving near misses and air raids and bombs and fire. The Humans think she is lucky and god-given but Lexa knows it’s because their weapons do not harm them, even now.

Lexa meets Clarke on the edges of a ruined European town and Clarke smiles at her and embraces her, despite their opposing uniforms.

“How are we always on opposite sides?” Clarke asks her with a laugh and bares her wolfish teeth.

And Lexa doesn’t know the answer. She thinks it’s probably just ingrained in them.

Instead of returning to her people in the East, Lexa shakes free the uniform and borrows a stolen one of Clarke’s and they spend the longest time around each other since they met some two-thousand years prior.

They share stories and meals and a bed. And as they travel south they find a war photographer who they pay to take a photo and then lose sight of when an air-raid happens some weeks later.

Lexa loses sight of Clarke in the fire and the smoke and the settling dust.

* * *

Another war longer and fiercer than the first occurs.

They do not meet each other in this one.

Lexa refuses to fight and instead expends her energy on helping innocents escape.

She is wealthy and smart and cannot die and more than once shields small children with her body and bears the brunt of bullets and fire and comes out clean.

And though they do not meet, they hear stories.

Lexa hears those from the North. Of how the Russians are using a massive golden wolf against the Nazi's and Allies alike. And that strikes fear in the heart of the people around her, as if it’s some code-name for an unknown weapon.

It’s not.

Clarke still bears the epithet of God of Death; blonde fur soaked through to red. And when resting in a ruined city she hears of the woman that has saved countless Jewish lives; dodging death as Clarke had done some twenty years prior. They call Lexa an angel.

Clarke knows she’s not.

* * *

It’s not until the nineties that Lexa hears mention of Clarke again.

And it really does come in the most beautiful of ways.

Clarke, leader of her people; last surviving of the ancient ones; God of Death; calls upon her own kind and Lexa’s kind to convene; to come together for the first time in centuries upon centuries with the promise of peace.

They meet in a neutral zone; not held by either party. Some beautiful woodland on the border of Canada and the Americas.

And Lexa takes stock of the twelve clans, of the twelve imperiums and they face her and bow their heads as if she has not been absent as their ruling Queen for some time. But history dies hard and she has lead them to victory upon victory so they will follow her regardless.

Lexa calls their leaders forward and sits at half a round table and watches the other side fill with the forms of werewolves, both as human and not and some in-between; as if time has allowed them perfect a middle ground.

And when Clarke walks in, swathed in furs and a swab of red paint across her nose, Lexa feels her heart beat faster and her stomach flip and her cheeks grow hot and remembers the first time she had met the she-wolf.

A number then. A brand. A symbol.

But she is not that anymore.

Here she is Clarke Griffin; not a stolen name, given, earned. Leader of her people. God of Death.

* * *

Peace is easily brokered.

Clarke’s people are one whole clan with Clarke at their head and Lexa does not need permission to integrate them as an imperium of their own.

 _Pakstokakru_ , her people dub them in their ancient tongue.

The era of war is over.

The time of peace, begins.

* * *

Clarke makes a home in the Mountains; of Europe, of Australia, of Asia, of America.

Never the same country but always within the mountains. Cold and beautiful and fresh and hidden.

Clarke makes a home and tends to gardens and sheep and cows and goats and adopts dogs from shelters and brings them peace.

Clarke makes a home and becomes a healer of the land and runs along it with her fellow wolves and dingoes and coyotes and adopted dogs; golden fur not bloodied for the first time in eons.

Clarke makes a home and asks Lexa to join her.

* * *

Lexa falls in beside Clarke as if it’s as natural to her as breathing; and maybe it is.

Lexa falls in beside Clarke as if, once upon a time, she was not her captor and her keeper and her peoples killer.

Lexa falls in beside Clarke and presses a kiss to her forehead and cheeks and nose and mouth, and grazes her teeth and fangs against Clarke’s neck and feels the erupting claws scratch against her back.

Lexa asks Clarke _“why_ , _why now_?” And Clarke touches at her scars and lets Lexa touch at hers and tells her that she was sick of fighting and running and pretending.

She doesn't need to elaborate on the 'pretending' of  _what._ Because Lexa takes this answer and swallows it down and feels the beauty of it it erupt in her chest and in her heart and lets the feeling consume her whole.

And Lexa tells Clarke that she has loved her from the moment her green eyes captured Clarke’s gold and blue and those colors in between.

And Clarke tells her much the same.

* * *

These are the facts. The basic way of life.

Vampires and Werewolves are never friends.

For friends is a human concept.

Vampires and Werewolves are allies and mates and lovers and hold bonds deeper and stronger than Humans can even conceive.

* * *

These are the facts. The basic way of life.

Lexa and Clarke are never friends.

Lexa and Clarke go from enemies to lovers and skip the step in between as if it is the natural way of things.

And maybe it is; for them.


	7. Witches

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> actually i take back what i said about the costume one being my worst/hardest to complete. this one takes the cake. i actually did a WHOLE other story earlier today. but it was getting too complicated and long and i ended up hating it. so there's this one instead. which i'm also not 100% sold on but OKAY. 
> 
> i hope u dont mind it !
> 
> catch me over at my tumblr [@bestheda](http://bestheda.tumblr.com/) for a moodboard or a chat or something!
> 
> based on the prompts from [@clextober](https://clextober.tumblr.com/)

Lexa thinks this probably breaks some sort of cardinal rule.

Not that she’s even sure there _are_ cardinal rules, but she’s read Harry Potter like once. Maybe twice. And it was a cardinal rule _there_ so, you know, _logically—_

“I’m going crazy,” she says, rubbing at the bridge of her nose.

“Is that a statement or an admission? Because I’ve been telling you that since you decided to major in Pol-Sci.”

“Shut up, Lincoln.”

Why had she come here again? _Oh right._ Lincoln. Lincoln had asked her to come. No, sorry. Not asked. Because that would be too nice of an explanation. Blackmailed. Lincoln had _blackmailed_ her to come. Lincoln had blackmailed her to come because he was afraid of meeting his new girlfriends parents. So, technically, Lincoln was the cause of this— whatever _this_ was.

Because she really, _really_ , is sure she is going crazy.

Because this stupid little ass fuck of nowhere town, in middle of goddamn Maine (like it’s even a proper state), has some _weird_ shit going on. And it’s not like she can even run away because she’d fallen asleep on the drive and she has _no idea_ where she even is and there’s no cell signal and—

Again out the corner of her eye, she sees it. And she says _it_ very seriously, because there’s no fucking explaining what it is she’s seeing. At least. Not explaining it in terms that aren’t _magic._ Because that’s what it is, she’s decided. It’s magic.

The man two booths across from them at the cafe is performing magic. And not that bullshit David Blaine kind of magic. Like _real_ magic. Like Harry Potter or Stardust magic. Proper honest to god magic.

It’s also not the _first_ time she thinks she’s seen it happen, either.

Because ever since they arrived here she’s seen things; unexplainable things. But before now it’s been easy enough to kind of, just, pretend she hasn’t seen them. Because this is _Maine_. And Maine has some weirdos in it to begin with. But this is just above and beyond easy to ignore because it’s just so— in the open.

And Lincoln is acting like it’s not happening. Or he can’t see it. Or he’s paid someone to mess with her. Or—

Or she’s going crazy. Which is the only real explanation here, she thinks.

She wants to throttle her brother. Grab him by the neck and just shake him. Because first off, how _dare_ Lincoln so blatantly ignore the shit going on two booths across. And secondly—

“Hey babe,” the voice startles her from her furious little musings; Octavia sliding into the booth seat beside Lincoln and pressing a kiss against his cheek, “Hey kiddo.”

“I’m older than you by a month, Octavia,” she huffs out and puts her hand up against the side of her face so she can’t see what it is she thinks she’s seeing.

“Lexa just admitted she’s gone crazy,” Lincoln chuckles, linking fingers Octavia and pressing a kiss to her knuckles.

“Oh, finally! We told you not to major in Pol-Sci.”

“Shut up!” Lexa snaps again and buries her head in her menu and tries to think about anything else except what's going on, or what’s _not_ going on, because she’s afraid to admit it out loud.

But then the waitress is there, standing by their table and she chances a look. Just a look. The girl is just stunning. Like beyond beautiful. Lexa thinks she hasn’t someone so beautiful, if she’s honest. Even Costia, who was goddess level beautiful, comes nowhere close to _this_.

Her mouth goes dry.

“Cat got your tongue?” they say with a cheeky little smile and Lexa balks and scrambles at her menu and peers at like she isn’t just going to order scrambled eggs on toast anyway.

Octavia and her are friends, Lexa gathers. Ex’s maybe. Because Octavia is looking at her with doe eyes and a cute little smile and pinked cheeks and Lincoln— Lincoln is acting more or less the same way too. Which _okay._

Lexa doesn’t look at her again.

* * *

They’re all invited to some party down at the only bar in town and Lexa dreads going because for the last twenty-four hours she’s barricaded herself up in their hotel room and pretends she’s sick.

But Lincoln holds a hand to her forehead and Octavia gives her a look and then some woman comes by who reminds her of the waitress, and apparently she’s the only doctor in town. And she gives the all clear and tells Lexa if she’s not feeling well again, to come by her clinic and say hello.

So she’s made to dress up and look nice and go down to the bar. And she _very pointedly_ keeps her eyes trained on the ground. Even when someone literally floats by (she can see their feet, dangling above the road below).

The bars packed. Like sardines.

And when Lexa finally manages to squeeze through all the bodies and find her way to the counter, she’s faced with a very, _very,_ familiar set of blue eyes and blonde hair. Tipped pink, which is strange, because two days previous it was blue. Or not strange, she thinks. This whole town is _fucking weird_ after all.

“Howdy,” they say over the music, the same cheeky smile dancing across their features, “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Do you just work everywhere?” Lexa asks and sighs and fishes her cash from her jeans, “Don’t answer that, can I get a beer. Any. The cheapest.”

The girl looks down, stares at the money, scrunches her eyebrows and looks back up, “We uh— We don’t take that here. But here. One on the house, anyway. ‘Cause you’re cute.”

Lexa flushes, deep enough that she feels the tips of her ears grow hot, but she takes the offered bottle anyway and takes a sip and whatever the hell _this_ is, is not the cheapest beer they have in stock, she’s sure. But the girl is just leaning against the bar and smiling at her and unabashedly letting her eyes drag down Lexa’s body and—

“Hey Clarke,” Octavia says, squeezing in beside them, hand tangled up with Lincoln’s, “Oh you already got something how—”

“On the house,” Clarke (apparently) replies and winks at Lexa, and she absolutely does not miss the look Lincoln gives her for _that_ one, “What can I get you two?”

Lexa leaves the bar earlier than the others. Slightly tipsy off the one beer that seemed to last forever. And stumbles her way back towards the hotel.

She doesn’t miss the woman three doors down from them with the floating grocery bags. Or the way her dog is missing its— well its entire body really. It’s a walking skeleton. But Lexa is drunk (kind of) so she just sighs and pushes the door open and promptly passes out.

* * *

“We’re all going down to the lake, for a swim, want to come?”

Octavia is looking at her like it’s not a stupid question. Like it wasn’t 50 degrees outside last night. And probably similar today; even though it’s sunny.

“It’s the middle of October,” Lexa replies, squinting at her.

“It’s heated.”

“I didn’t know there were hot springs in Maine.”

Octavia looks at her like she’s stupid again, but just shakes her head and shrugs, “Anyway, Linc says you should come. Clarke will be there.”

Clarke. The bartender. Or waitress. Or _whatever_ it is she is.

She deliberates. Or pretends to deliberate. Because the moment the words left Octavia’s mouth, Lexa had already made her mind up. She’s gay, not dumb.

“Yeah whatever, but when we freeze and die don’t blame me.”

The weather is actually surprisingly tepid. Warm even. End of summer type warm. Which is just another weird thing to add to Lexa’s ever growing list of weird things found in Polis, Maine.

The second weird thing is that Clarke’s hair is tipped green today; no longer pink. And Lexa _knows_ there wasn’t enough time to get that done between last night and this morning.

But Clarke is cute and beautiful and wearing a two piece that makes it so Lexa can hardly tear her eyes away from her and she’s cradling a cold wine cooler and laughing. And Lexa has it _bad_ , she thinks. Worse than bad.

And when everyone strips down to actually jump in, Lexa _nearly_ misses the third weird thing she sees in the morning.

Clarke has a tattoo of a bird on her shoulder. Lexa knows this because she saw it when they first arrived. But by the time they’re all jumping in, Lexa sees the shoulder bare, and the tattoo instead settled on Clarke’s collarbone.

She pretends not to notice.

She also pretends not to notice how the lake doesn’t smell of geothermal vents or hot springs. And how it smells clean and fresh and is crystal clear. But is as nice and refreshing as a lake would be in the middle of summer.

* * *

They’re invited to Clarke’s home for dinner.

Which is actually Octavia’s home, too. Because, she explains on the way over, she is _very_ much adopted. Blake is her birth name, but the Griffin’s are her family.

And this throws Lexa for a loop because before this she was _pretty_ sure that Clarke and Octavia were in a relationship at some point. But she tells her that she was adopted when they were eleven; so that throws _that_ theory out the window.

The estate is massive. Grand. Beautiful. It’s got it’s own turn-around driveway and a man that comes out to collect your car and take it god only knows where. It’s basically a castle, Lexa thinks. This is the closest she’ll ever come to a castle without going to Europe.

But Clarke’s mother comes out and oh it’s the _fucking doctor. Of course._

“Hello Lexa,” she says, “Feeling better?”

“Much, thank you,” she squeaks out and lets the blush crawl up her throat.

At least Clarke rescues her— _them_. Clarke rescues _them._ Clarke and the big black cat tucked under her arm that purrs so loudly Lexa can feel it without even touching it.

The inside of the house is just as massive and beautiful as the outside; and Lexa finds herself wandering in circles just trying to take it all in and when Clarke appears at her side, she smiles and shakes her head.

“Rich much?” Lexa jokes and Clarke smiles and shrugs in return.

“A little. Generations of wealth. I can’t stand it, personally. Want a tour?”

“Sure.”

* * *

Lexa can’t hold it in anymore.

She tries. She _really_ tries.

The house tour was nice. Clarke was good. Her hair started out as pink and turned purple by the end and the change must have been so gradual because Lexa doesn’t even notice until they’re sitting on the couch clutching ice-cold ciders and her brain registers something is different.

And dinner is lovely and everything is beautiful.

But Abby teleported away two minutes ago to tend to a patient. And Clarke’s hair is blue now. And Octavia is joking around with Jake and sending fireworks from the end of their fingers crashing into each other. And Lincoln is pretending like none of this is going on and—

“Alright,” she snaps, “What the fuck is going on?”

Lincoln twists his eyebrows and looks offended and Octavia is looking at Lexa like she’s crazy, and maybe she is. But she can’t ignore it anymore.

“This place is fucking _weird._ And either you’re all ignoring it or I’m going crazy. I saw a guy floating his mug when we arrived. And your hair keeps changing. And your Mother just teleported away. And there’s fireworks. And the moving tattoo. And the beer that never ends and—”

Jake is the first to laugh. And it’s a gut heavy laugh that makes him excuse himself from the table because he can’t settle it down.

“Lex—” Lincoln starts with a chuckle, “They’re witches.”

“Yeah, you know, magic?” Octavia continues, “Wait. Did— Did you not know that we were?”

Lexa feels her cheeks burn, “No! How the fuck was I meant to know that, O? And you,” she yells and points a finger at Lincoln, “Why didn’t you _tell_ me?”

“Because bub, Octavia’s been doing magic in the apartment for _months_. I just assumed you _knew._ ”

Lexa can’t help but run.

* * *

She gets lost on the estate grounds. Of course. Of _course_ she gets lost on some fucking magical estate grounds.

The big black cat joins her at some point, crawling up on Lexa’s lap and purring her into a state of calm, kneading at her with far more gentle paws than become him.

But Clarke is the one to finally come and find her.

“Wow they really fucked you up with this one, huh?” she says, flopping down next to Lexa in the gardens; hair back to being a lovely shade of pink.

Lexa doesn’t say anything. Lexa just stares at the ground.

“Anyway yeah we’re witches. The whole town is. Everyone here has magic in some form or another. I’m a kind of a healer, like my Mom. Dad’s a wiz with technology. Octavia is well— Octavia. She can blow stuff up.”

“I feel like I’m going crazy. None of this is real.”

“Kind of is, unfortunately for you. I mean you and your brother have magic too so—”

“No we _absolutely_ do not.”

Clarke laughs and Lexa feels her cheeks burn, “Yes you do. Non-magics can’t enter town limits. And O isn’t strong enough to pull you through alone. You’ve just never tapped into it before. Lots of people are like you, actually. They grow up not knowing so never bother trying.”

Lexa sighs and shuts her eyes and tries to wake up. Because she’s sleeping. She’s either sleeping or dead in a ditch somewhere and this is her brains final attempt at keeping her safe.

Clarke pinches her, “You’re not dreaming. Or dead. You really are here in Polis, Maine. And there really is a witch sitting on the bench beside you. Also the cat is actually a person. That’s our friend. She's an ass.”

The cat is a person. Of course it’s a person. Dark eyes look up at her and blink slowly and then the hulking mass of fur jumps off and hisses at Clarke and scuttles back the way it had come.

“She’s just hoping for free food,” Clarke says, watching him go, “Her name is Raven, by the way, she's a shape-shifter so that's not her only form. You met her the other day at the lake. She’s the one who smacked my ass?”

Lexa sighs, she remembers, “Can you tell me what I am?”

“I don’t know. Mom might be able to tell you. I never studied to be an empath, she did. If you stick around long enough though you’ll find out yourself. We have a leyline running beneath town. It’s why we built it here.”

“Great yeah I’ll uproot my whole life to come and be a witch. Get naked. Summon the devil.”

“Mockery is not the product of a strong mind, Lexa. But I wouldn’t mind seeing you naked. We can even try to summon the devil, if you want.”

She stares at Clarke, smiling and pink-haired and beautiful in the moonlight. She thinks about her life back home, majoring in political science because it just had always made sense to do so; she was a natural leader. She thinks of Lincoln and Octavia; of all the times things just _happened_ in the apartment and Lexa put it down to coincidence. It’d had been going on for _months._  Even Lincoln—

“God, there is so much I overlooked.”

“Yeah, but it’s okay. We try _really_ hard not to be noticed outside of safe havens. Octavia is just reckless.”

“Could I even leave if I wanted to?”

Clarke shrugs, “Of course. Do you want to?”

She thinks of Clarke. Of how her presence makes her stomach flip and her heart hammer. Of how the blush crawls to her neck and her ears and her nose.

“Guess not. Guess I’m a witch now, huh?”

“Guess so,” Clarke laughs and holds her hand, as if it was meant to fit there.


	8. Haunted House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me , crying while writing my own chapter : "theyre just..theyre just so good"
> 
> catch me over at my tumblr [@bestheda](http://bestheda.tumblr.com/) for a moodboard or a chat or something!
> 
> based on the prompts from [@clextober](https://clextober.tumblr.com/)

Clarke skips town six months after her Father dies.

Between her Mother not being able to look at her, diving headfirst into drinking and barely leaving bed, Marcus being a useless godfather, Finn being less than ideal, and her friends showering her in looks of pity and treating her like she’s made of glass; she just can’t take it.

So she packs her bags and in the middle of the night gets on the first bus headed East. Away from home. Away from San Francisco. Away from everything she’s ever loved. Just— _Away._

* * *

She stops in Salt Lake City and spends time taking in the sights; in all her life she’d never traveled by bus. Her family always insisted on plane travel, it was easy, and it wasn’t like they couldn’t afford it. A surgeon Mother and Engineer Father? Clarke never wanted after anything.

But eventually she gets the creeping feeling that she’s too close to home still and buys another bus ticket and crawls on-board and off she goes again. Further East.

Denver. Kansas City. Up to Des Moines. Across to Chicago where she briefly considers heading North to cross the Canadian border to disappear  into a totally new wilderness.

But one of her travelling companions that bus picked up some twenty-odd stops ago, an old woman headed East to see her family for the first time in thirty years, shepherds her back on the next bus and dotes on her with sticky cake and long-winded stories; not that Clarke minds.

They go from Chicago to Indianapolis to Cincinnati to Columbus and there the woman presses a twenty-dollar note into Clarke’s hands and kisses her forehead and tells her to keep heading East, that eventually she’ll find what she’s looking for. And Clarke pretends that she believes her; she’s not even sure what she’s looking for herself.

The woman goes South and Clarke goes East and falls asleep somewhere between Columbus and Pittsburgh. She wakes when an older man shakes her shoulder and tells her their destination. He’s kind and nice and gives Clarke a bottle of water and sits with her at the station in the afternoon sun while she deliberates her next move.

“What’re you running away from, kid?” he asks.

And Clarke shrugs. _Everything,_ she thinks.

He tells her that he doesn’t blame her for not knowing. Tells her that life’s harder now for the younger generation than it ever has been and maybe running away is the only solution they really have.

He tells her that he knows a place, a small town near South Mountain. The Greyhound won’t get her there, not all the way anyway. But Hagerstown is close. And it’s nice, he tells her, calming. He ran away there himself when he was about her age; and maybe it won’t suit her, but maybe it will. So he draws her a crude map and folds it up and passes it to her with a kind smile and begs her to be safe; because the world isn’t anymore.

Clarke watches him go, disappearing into the evening traffic of Pittsburgh and then clutches the folded piece of paper in her hands, and gets on the 200 line headed East; out towards Hagerstown.

* * *

She goes into the nearest bank when she arrives and gives them a tired smile and asks to withdraw five thousand dollars, in cash. They don’t ask questions, not beyond the customary or polite; but the woman behind the desk looks at her with worried eyes that reminds her of her Mother, and Clarke has to flee the moment she’s able; stashing the money away in her backpack and keeping her head down.

There’s not an easy way to get where she needs to go, she finds. So she spends a few days camped out between a Walmart and IHOP, stealing charge for her phone to search through used cars and ride-share apps. And showering in a gym that doesn’t ask her for I.D whenever she walks in; she’s fit and can fake her way through checkpoints.

Her saving grace comes in the form of a group of young girls, no older than her, who stream into the IHOP at some god awful hour of the morning. She catches the sign on one of the girls cars. _For sale $1000_.

They’re nice enough, even though Clarke interrupts them mid-meal. When she says she’ll buy the car, right here and now, the girl, the owner, goes wide-eyed before agreeing and shoveling her pancakes into her mouth and bringing Clarke outside to check it out.

It’s a piece of shit ‘02 Honda Accord, the girl tells her, but it runs like a dream. Was serviced a month back and has the papers to prove it. She just needs the money elsewhere currently, and shrugs when Clarke gives her a look.

All of them ask where Clarke’s headed. She doesn’t tell them, instead skating around the subject like it’s ice. And they drop it before telling her about how they’re thinking of going to California for college; Clarke’s accent isn’t exactly hard to place. And she tells them to stay East instead. That all California does, is cause pain.

She pays in cash and swaps an empty hand for a set of keys and the owner, Sarah, wraps her up in a hug as if they’re long time friends and whispers _good luck_ in Clarke’s ear and presses a kiss to both of Clarke’s cheeks.

And then she’s driving. Sunshade down to block out the sun. Onward and away.

Towards the Mountains.

* * *

She finds the no-name town the man from Pittsburgh told her about; following his crudely drawn map while munching on a burger.

It’s tiny. Remote. Swathed on every side by trees and hills and dense forests. It’s got one whole corner shop for the entire population (though Clarke doubts is very large), a Lutheran church and an Elementary school, all in walking distance from each other.

Clarke parks her car and sits outside of the church and pulls her cigarettes out and takes a long drag from one, filling her lungs and closing her eyes, waiting until it burns to release the smoke; she is not a ritual smoker, but times like these demand it of her.

The stranger was right, Clarke thinks, it is nice. Peaceful. The air clean and crisp.

“Been a long time since we had anybody actually _stop_ here,” a voice chuckles out.

She opens her eyes and watches the embers at the end of her cigarette fizzle about, the ash dropping to the ground. The stranger is tall, wide, heavy-set. Dark skin. Shaved head. Tattoos wrapped around both his arms. But a kind smile, Clarke notices. Soft eyes.

“Wasn’t planned,” Clarke tells him.

“Ya car broke down? Raven can probably fix—”

“Nah. Just. Wandering the states, I guess,” she grits out, taking another drag, “I don’t even know where _here_ is.”

“Maryland,” he says, shuffling to sit a little ways off to her side, “Most places here don’t have names. They change hands so often, I think Myersville owns us currently. It’s just _home_ to most of us. I’m Lincoln. Like the President.”

“Clarke,” she supplies and nods her head, “Like the— _nothing_ I guess. _C-L-A-R-K-E_.”

“Welcome home, Clarke.”

* * *

Lincoln invites her into the Church and introduces her to the Pastor. Gaia she calls herself. Just Gaia. As if last names aren’t relevant; and maybe they aren’t when everyone knows everyone else.

Neither of them ask her why she was travelling, or where she’s come from, or where she was intending to go. They show her around and pass off a Pepsi and tell her about their little township and joke with each other about the squabbles between townspeople. And when the sun begins to set, Gaia asks her back to her house; at least until Clarke works out what she wants to do.

Indra is her Mother, Gaia tells her on the walk over there. She was in the Military before getting injured and if Clarke values her well-being she won’t stare too long at the burns that dot half her Mother’s face.

Clarke doesn’t.

She smiles and introduces herself and firmly shakes Indra’s hand and promises she won’t be too much of a hassle for too long. And when Indra asks where in California she’s from, Clarke doesn’t lie and tells her San Francisco. Indra doesn’t pry any further than that, just smiles and offers Clarke a seat at their table.

Talking with them both comes easy, naturally even. They don’t ask questions they know Clarke won’t answer and Clarke doesn’t ask any in return. Instead she talks about their town and about their landscape and about the Mountains and forests that span the horizon.

And when Clarke feels her eyes grow heavy, Gaia shows her the downstairs spare room and the bathroom down the hall and wishes Clarke a goodnight.

Clarke falls asleep in an actual bed for the first time since leaving home.

* * *

She pawns two hundred dollars off onto them by the end of the week and Indra slips it back into her pocket. They are well enough off, she tells Clarke; they don’t need a child’s wealth.

Gaia has to attend to pastoral duties and leaves by eight every morning. By nine, on the seventh day, Indra asks if Clarke intends to stay much longer. And when Clarke shrugs, because _truly_ she isn’t sure; she drags Clarke out to her truck and makes Clarke throw all of her bags into the tray.

They travel some half mile down the street and then turn onto an unsurfaced road, thick with gravel and undergrowth. The drive is done in absolute silence, aside from the sound of the car, and Clarke is thankful for that, really.

And then Indra slows down and Clarke looks up from out the side window, a well-loved house stands before them.

Clarke thinks it’s beautiful, says so even.

“It’s haunted,” Indra tells her without a shred of humor, “She needs a roommate.”

“The— the _house_ needs a roommate?” Clarke asks, twisting her eyebrows.

Indra barks a laugh and shakes her head and nods for Clarke to get out, “No. Its tenant. She needs a roommate. Follow me.”

* * *

Clarke grabs her backpack and jogs after Indra, already moving around the side of the house. She’s _pretty_ sure she sees a cat in passing, but the house is haunted, and movies have told her _never_ to look twice at something that’s haunted so—

The back of the house is a maze of plants and trees and flowers; cultivated and loved and well taken care of, Clarke notices. Some of the plants are even fruit bearing ones; berries and currants and figs.

“Woods?” Indra calls into the mess of green and waits.

Clarke doesn’t hear anything. Not even a peep. And she refuses to look back at the house, just in case. She keeps her eyes on Indra, and the garden, and especially at a little bumble bee that buzzes on past and settles on a little fruit for a small rest.

“Cute,” she says, “I’ve never seen such a fat bee.”

“It’s obese,” a voice says, not Indra, and Clarke snaps her head up and sees an amused dark haired girl standing amongst the garden, dressed in a simple white shirt tucked in pants with suspenders, “And how many times have I told you to just call me Lexa, Indra.”

“I have a potential roommate,” Indra says and gestures at Clarke.

“Oh?” Lexa says with an amused little grin, brushing her dirty hands against her pants as she wanders by them, headed up the steps of the back porch, “Have you told her it’s haunted yet?”

Indra sternly nods and follows Lexa up and when Clarke doesn’t follow either of them; like some kind of vampire that needs permission to enter a property, Lexa gestures her hand in behind her and Clarke scuttles in, kicking her boots off at the door.

* * *

The house is beautiful. Old.  _Very_ old, Clarke thinks. Filled to the brim with antiquity. Books and vessels and old knick-knacks from generations past. An old-defunct grandfather clock sitting against one wall.

If there was ever a house to be haunted, this is it.

But it’s warm too. Cozy. Crammed with things that remind her of the girl in the garden. Smelling of honey and flowers and herbs and freshly baked bread. It’s nothing like her old home; though this entire town is nothing like her old city, either.

Lexa passes her a warm mug of tea and offers a seat at the kitchen table and looks at Clarke like she’s trying to figure her out, see beyond her skin, “Why do you want to move here?” she asks.

Clarke _nearly_ says she doesn’t. She had no idea where she was going when she left California. East was just _away_ from everything, so she went that direction. Instead she takes a breath and looks at Lexa and drowns in her green eyes and shrugs.

“I lost home months ago, it’s been shit not having one,” she says, and it’s the truth. Home died when her Father did. Home died when her Mother wouldn’t look her in the eye and turned to alcohol. Home died a long time ago.

Lexa regards her again before nodding, almost imperceptibly, “And you’re aware this place is haunted?”

“Yeah, you two keep saying that.”

“It’s good to be sure. The Commanders have already given you permission to live here, you wouldn’t be sitting here otherwise. So it’s up to you, now.”

Clarke doesn’t ask who the Commanders are, just in case they’re ghosts. She also doesn’t look behind her, _just in case_ those very ghosts are there. She looks at Lexa though. Looks at the smudge of dirt on her cheek and on her nose and at the stains of green on her shirt and at the white of her teeth.

“Guess it’s worth a try.”

* * *

The Commanders do turn out to be ghosts, actually. Though Clarke pretends not to see them for the first dozen times. Clarke pretends not to feel them move through or over her or tamper with her belongings. Because she told Lexa that she was okay with living in a Haunted house, and she is, kind of.

But eventually they become background noise; as much a part of the house as the floor and walls and ancient sofa. Eventually they become such second nature to Clarke, that when she’s making scrambled eggs in the morning for herself and for Lexa, tending to the gardens, she leaves a serving out on the kitchen top for them. And when she comes back in from eating in the yard, the plate is empty and the cutlery dirty.

Clarke settles into village life far easier than she thought she would. She rises with the sun and goes to bed with the stars and makes the trek into town by foot or bike and visits Indra and Gaia at least once a week. And Lincoln too, who introduces her to other townies; several locals and some from nameless towns further away; Octavia and Bellamy and the district mechanic, Raven.

And when people found out that she’s living with Lexa they smile and nod and tell her that she’s a perfect fit for it, actually.

Lexa too, comes as a surprise to Clarke.

Lexa who wakes her the first morning after moving in with a gentle shake of her shoulder, and takes her sleepily figure outside and shows Clarke the morning family of deer and the honeybees and the swarms of birds that Clarke can’t even name.

Lexa who laughs with Clarke over breakfast and lunch and dinner and tells her stories of the old house and of the land and of the people the Commanders used to be; and how, one day, Lexa will join their ranks and the house will move onto someone else. Clarke doesn’t ask if she’s included somewhere in that plan, because something just tells her that she is.

And it’s not until almost six months drags by that Clarke gets brave enough to travel with Indra into the nearest city and turn her cell phone back on. Lexa wordlessly joins them, tangled up beside Clarke in the three-seater truck, hand tucked into the crook of Clarke’s leg.

Clarke ignores the built up messages from her old friends and from Finn and instead calls her Mother, who picks up on the second ring and bursts into tears and begs forgiveness from Clarke; who bursts into tears in return. She doesn’t tell her Mother where she is, and Abby doesn’t ask. But Clarke says she’s happy, and maybe one day, when the holes in their hearts are filled enough, they’ll see each other again; and Abby agrees.

The ride back to the nameless town and nameless house is quiet and somber and Lexa presses a kiss into the side of Clarke’s head and gives a gentle squeeze at her knee.

* * *

It’s a beautiful winter morning when Clarke wakes up and finds a ring on her bedside table. No note. No message. Just a dirty little red velvet box, opened to reveal a plain golden band.

She handles it gingerly, as if it will bend or crumble or break; and she knows, instinctively, that it isn’t her size and looks around the empty room and at the empty, still warm, side of the bed that Lexa sleeps on.

“Is this meant to be permission to marry your child?” she asks the house as she shuffles through it, down toward the kitchen to start on breakfast, “Does she know?”

The windows fog up this time of year and it’s Clarke’s favorite because of it. During the warmer months she’s learned to read Morse; watching light bulbs flick on and off two rooms over. But the cold brings fog and dew and lets the house talk to her with shaky words from worlds beyond.

_Yes_ , the window reads. And she laughs and clutches the ring and holds it close.

Clarke makes the porridge and sprinkles it with honey and berries and leaves a large serving on the counter-top and pats her pocket with the ring in it and looks out the window to the frosty garden beyond.

“If she says no, I’ll tear you down for this,” Clarke says to the house, feeling a chill across her neck in return.

With the bowls clutched close, she slips into boots and wanders out into the garden and finds Lexa crouched beside her sheltered bees; fiddling with their box warmers.

“Breakfast, sorry it’s nothing fancy.”

“It’s always fancy when you make it,” Lexa replies and turns to stand, pressing a kiss into the corner of Clarke’s mouth, “Sorry I didn’t wake you.”

“I like sleeping in.”

They sit on their customary bench and soak in the morning sun and eat their porridge and Clarke feels the weight of the ring in her pocket and when Lexa puts aside her empty bowl and closes her eyes and leans her head back, Clarke reaches in and holds the cold metal against her hands.

“Your Mother and Marcus confirmed they’re coming for Indra’s Thanksgiving, didn’t they?”

“Mmhm,” Clarke replies and draws her hand out, “Hey, big question?”

Lexa doesn’t open her eyes, not immediately. Lexa just grunts and whines when Clarke moves aside and then startles when she feels Clarke crouching in the snap-frozen grass in front of her, green eyes opening to search Clarke’s face, “You’ll get cold and complain all day, we know snow angels aren’t your friend.”

“Will you marry me?” Clarke blurts out, feeling the heat at her cheeks as she holds the ring out in the palm of her hand.

A burst of wind rustles through the garden and throws flecks of ice about them and Clarke thinks this actually couldn’t be more perfect. Because Lexa is red as a tomato and smiling wider than Clarke has ever seen her and with shaking hands, she pulls Clarke up to sit on her lap and presses a kiss into Clarke’s mouth and grips at the jacket at her hips.

“Yes, Clarke Griffin,” she says and presses her forehead into Clarke’s, “I was meant to ask _you_ first, the house gave me a ring weeks ago, I’ve just been waiting for the right time.”

“Beat you,” Clarke laughs and melts against her girlfriend of four years, now her fiancée, and eventual wife, “You didn’t move fast enough so they recruited me instead. Always so insistent.”

“Glad you took that chance on the haunted house now, Griffin?”

“I never said I wasn’t.”


	9. Folklore / Legends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this isn't edited so catch these hands making edits later, i've just been out ALL DAY and just wanted to get this posted oamghajgkl.
> 
> but OKAY so i went a little off prompt here. but i still count it as a legend/folklore, cause of like...Grounder society. LOOK i just wanted to write about Clarke i love her okay ahgjkl
> 
> catch me over at my tumblr [@bestheda](http://bestheda.tumblr.com/) for a moodboard or a chat or something!
> 
> based on the prompts from [@clextober](https://clextober.tumblr.com/)

Clarke doesn’t know where or why or how it starts, but she knows how it ends.

Clarke leaves Arkadia, then Camp Jaha, bearing the burden of three-hundred something Mountain Men souls, countless dead Grounders, and a broken heart.

She leaves with the clothes on her back and a gun in her hand and pretends, all the way to the treeline, that she knows what it is she’s doing.

She doesn’t.

* * *

She walks, for a time; for a long time, really.

She just walks and walks and walks.

Two whole sunrises pass before she feels her legs give out from under her and she collapses where she stands, hand lolling against the flow of the river she’d been following for days.

She’s tired and she’s thirsty and she’s starving. But none of that compares to the ache in her chest. And with the cold hard rocks below, she stares into the great blue sky and sobs.

The gun has a whole clip, and she has another in her pocket; she could kill herself right now, thirty times over, if she wishes. But the gun isn’t for her, the gun is for if she finds Lexa; and she _will_ find Lexa.

Dehydrated and exhausted, her tears do not last long, and she rolls to her side and drinks in the water until she pukes and then drinks another lot to fill the empty pit in her stomach. And sated with water, she crawls to the bank of the river and curls in against the base of a tree and closes her eyes and lets sleep take her whole.

* * *

Earth Skills, a class aboard the Ark, taught a lot of theory. The people teaching it hadn’t seen the ground and they believed the children wouldn’t either; but it’s a nice sentiment nonetheless.

Nothing prepares Clarke for actually having to live alone, though. Desperately and achingly alone.

She drinks and forages and looks at the fish darting about the river with jealous eyes. And she summons all her meager energy up to make a fire and scrapes her palms raw in the process.

And she walks. She never stops walking.

When the Ark has settled from the trauma in the Mountain; which they do not bear the same way she does, they will come looking for her. And Clarke isn’t ready to look them in the eyes, not yet.

So her body staggers itself to its feet every morning and trudges opposite the way it came and promises Clarke a sense of salvation when it finds where it’s going.

* * *

Two weeks after going missing, she stumbles on a trading caravan, headed south, towards Camp Jaha, towards her people.

She’s not the same person from when she left; weight lost and eyes empty. But they look at her with such reverence that Clarke cannot look at them back.

 _Maun-de fraga_ , they call her. Mountain killer; liberator.

They pause their march and stay with her and speak in broken English about the state of things and Clarke takes none of it in. Clarke doesn’t tell them anything in return. Clarke just sits and stares into the fire and pretends like these people aren’t holding her up as some kind of God.

When they move to leave, they pass off clothes and furs and a knapsack to Clarke; filled with meats and flatbreads and useful tools. And an older woman takes Clarke’s face in her hands and smiles and kisses Clarke on either cheek and tells her to _ste klir,_ stay safe.

Clarke watches them go and disappears into the forest like a ghost and tries to forget the way they all looked at her; she doesn’t deserve it.

* * *

A month after walking away she finds her footing and falls into earth life like she isn’t a child of the sky.

She hunts, she forages, she sleeps and she moves. She makes fires without scraping her hands raw and cooks meat and figs and fish different every time; learning what is right and what is not. She finds deep red berries days after meeting with the caravan, and crushes them up and uses them to dye her hair red; the blonde princess does not suit her anymore, she thinks.

Stalking a herd of deer comes hard and she uses six of her thirty bullets to eventually take one down; severing its carotid and standing over it as it bleeds out; sweat dripping from her brow to its mangled corpse below.

Deer are heavy, she finds, and she struggles under its dead weight until she finds dragging it to be easier; hoisting it up onto a makeshift sled and tying off ropes to her shoulders and waist, and drags all 80 pounds of it up and away from the open field and back into the forest.

Trading posts are littered throughout the landscape and she follows pillars of smoke until she finds one, tucked into a little rocky outcrop and littered with old-world trash and tradeables.

They take one look at her and then at her deer and jut their chin out and ask how much; and Clarke points to a ratted woven tarp and then at a knife and watches them deliberate; measuring the doe and checking its flesh and talking with each other.

One nods and takes the sled from Clarke and passes her back the ropes and then bundles the tarp and the knife together and passes it off to Clarke and then offers her a drink; customary procedure, Clarke knows.

This isn’t the first trading post she’s gone to; usually she just carries dried fish and nuts and pilfered objects from war bunkers. But they’re all the same.

She takes it and knocks the shot back with the three of them and they slap her on the back and laugh and ask her where she’s from.

 _Louwoda Kliron Kru_ , she lies; Shallow Valley is the only other territory close to here and she can’t risk saying any other. And they lift her hair and remark on its redness and wrap a colorful string of ribbon around her upper arm and make a joke that Clarke doesn’t understand but laughs with anyway.

And when she turns to leave, they tell her to be careful and when she shrugs and asks why; because until now she’s survived just fine. They look at each other very seriously and in low, quiet tones, as if they are trying not to draw the attention of the forest, they lean in and whisper, “ _Wanheda, Maun-de fraga, kamp raun.”_

Clarke laughs and puts her head down and runs.

* * *

 _Wamplei_ is death. _Heda_ is Commander. It’s not hard for Clarke to put them together.

Commander of Death. Mountain Destroyer.

This is what they think of her.

The hand with which she holds her gun shakes for _days_ after. She doesn’t do anything else except wander and drink and starves herself until she can no more.

She purposely eats a handful of foraged jobi nuts and lays with her feet in the freezing stream and watches the clouds and remembers, with vivid clarity, the look and smell of the boiled _Maunon_. When her hallucinations end some hours after, she turns and pukes up her empty stomach and beats her fists against the ground.

In the month since she left Camp Jaha, she has gone from being a human to a God to something more; something beyond Gods and Devils and mankind. A Commander. Like Lexa. Or, not like Lexa, she thinks. Because at least she had done what is _right_. At least that’s what she tells herself.

* * *

Month two drags by slower than the first.

She punishes herself for weeks after hearing the term; she has killed so many people since crashing into Earth; and the words sting harder than they should.

But passing travelers and hunters and gatherers see her and don’t know who or what she is. She is just the blood-haired _Louwoda Kliron Kru_ without a home. So she falls in beside them and shares her food and listens to the tales and picks up the language as she goes.

‘ _Wanheda_ roams the forest and is a shadow in the night,’ one says.

‘No, _Wanheda_ is a ghost,’ says another; ‘the Mountain Killer forced to walk the forests of the mountain for all eternity.’

‘Aye’, says another, ‘a ghost but as living as you or me. A shell. A spirit.’

 _Wanheda_ is an image. A story. A tale. A legend.

Clarke listens and soaks their stories in and comes up with stories of her own, adding fuel to an already raging fire.

“No,” she says, “ _Wanheda_ is the girl with hair like the sun that rains fire on her enemies. _Wanheda_ killed three hundred grounders and a thousand Mountain Men and if you speak ill of her she will kill you too.”

And they believe her.

* * *

A woman at a trading post, Niylah, is the first one that picks Clarke out for being who she really is. But she’s not like the others. Not afraid.

She doesn’t treat Clarke like a God. She still tells her that she knows she is _Wanheda,_ and Clarke feels the heavy weight of the gun in her pocket, but Niylah smiles and shrugs and passes Clarke the customary shot of drink and thanks her, for rescuing them from the Mountain. And when Clarke says she didn’t, that _Lexa_ did that (and she almost _spits_ the name), Niylah says the Commander has issued a statement otherwise.

Clarke hates Lexa. Clarke detests Lexa. Clarke will shoot Lexa the first moment she gets. But she smiles at this woman and takes the swig of alcohol and then presses Niylah against the far wall and kisses her and strips her of her clothes.

Niylah is warm. Niylah is soft. Niylah kisses her like she isn’t the Commander of Death. And when Clarke takes charge and snaps at her not to touch her back, Niylah listens. She doesn’t deserve to feel good or to feel love or to feel compassion, she thinks.

She sneaks out before the break of morning and gives a lingering look at the woman in the bed and pats the gun at her side.

Polis isn’t far, she knows. If she follows the road South-West, she’ll find it, she remembers another traveler telling her.

Of the thirty bullets she started with she has six remaining. She’s apt with a bow now, and even better with traps and a knife. The remaining six are not for hunting. Five are for Lexa and one is for herself.

She hikes her bags up and pulls back her hair and takes a breath in the frigid morning hair and starts to head South.

* * *

The Sky People are looking for _Wanheda,_ she hears; they have been for months.

She’s been camped in a small town some few miles outside of Polis for more time than she’s willing to admit. Even when traders head into the city and offer her a ride, she declines and instead settles by the old, nearly blind Healer and learns from her and teachers her own ways in return.

“What keeps you from the city, child?” the woman asks her and Clarke doesn’t answer, she doesn’t really know herself anymore.

“Ah,” the old woman continues and chuckles, grabbing at Clarke’s knee, “A lover then? Scorned?”

“You could say that.”

“Next time they go, you will go with them and I will give you a tonic,” she says with a hint of a smile under her wrinkles, “Pour it in her drink and she will be sick for days. It is not the retribution you seek, I can tell, but it is a good prank nonetheless.”

Clarke allows herself to smile and huffs a pretend laugh and considers drinking the tonic herself.

* * *

Polis is as beautiful as Lexa said it was.

 _“Polis will change the way you think about us,”_ Clarke remembers her saying.

It doesn’t change the way she thinks about Lexa; because that has been left to fester in her gut and in her heart and in her mind for nearly four months. But she does understand the sentiment, in a way.

Polis is conglomerate of all of the nations, a city built around a spanning, twisting high-rise. A cloud toucher, they call it. And Clarke thinks it’s a far more beautiful term.

She’s fluent in Trigedasleng, or as good as she ever will be, and she looks as much a Grounder now than she ever has done. Fitter than when she landed, fitter than after the Mountain’s Fall, fitter than after she fucked Niylah and left. Her time in the Trikru village gave her more strength and stamina and peace than all her journey before that.

So the city is not hard to slot herself into and pretend like she belongs; because Clarke does not believe she belongs anywhere, other than the sky, or with her Father.

She barters her tonics and her collections and trades her labor for a place to sleep. The inn-keep barely bats an eye at her; she is not the girl that fell from the sky, not anymore. She is _Klark_ with a hard K. No clan necessary.

She drinks and eats and sleeps and works and late into the evening she listens to stories from travelers from near and far away; and they tell her and the other listeners of their run in with _Wanheda._ How the only reason they got out with their heads is because they begged her and kissed her feet and cut off a lock of their hair. And Clarke fake-laughs and slaps them on the back and pretends she believes that wholeheartedly, like everyone else.

The legend of _Wanheda_ morphs and changes and evolves with every retelling.

Clarke hates them all.

* * *

Clarke sees Lexa in passing, more than once.

Clarke sees her but she _never_ sees Clarke.

The first time it happens, Clarke feels the weight of the gun in her jacket and the anguish in her heart and turns away before she does anything rash. Because Lexa is surrounded by _children_ and Lexa is laughing and shepherding them along; and all Clarke can see is the burned little faces of the children from Mount Weather and the sounds of them dying with each straggling breath. She punches a stone wall until her knuckles bleed.

The second time it happens, they pass by so very close to each other that Clarke feels Lexa brush against her shoulder; but by the time Lexa turns to see who had the gall to touch her, Clarke is already lost in the crowd.

The third time isn’t by accident, Clarke seeks her out during a meeting with clan leaders; they are wandering the garden district in the city and Clarke busies herself with hiding in the shade of a tree. Lexa looks at her, she knows; Lexa looks at her and sees a stranger and those green eyes move on and continue on their way. Clarke thinks about shooting Lexa here, surrounded by green; she doesn’t.

Clarke stays in the inn and very purposely avoids all the places she has seen Lexa thus far, to reduce further chances.

* * *

The talk of war comes by the time winter settles in.

It’s only whispers, at first. Drunk soldiers at tables talking only when everyone else has gone to bed. Clarke pours them drinks so she is privy to their conversation and they tell her, in just as low voices, that if she wants to keep her head on her shoulders she’ll escape before the Queen of Azgeda arrives.

But Clarke is the Commander of Death, and as such, no longer fears it. She just smiles and shakes her head and tells the men that she trusts in Lexa; even if she doesn’t.

An envoy of Sky People arrive by car some days later and Clarke stands on the balcony and drinks her ale and watches them march towards the central spire. She thinks she sees her Mother, but tries not to dwell on it.

She’s been missing for six months now; she hopes everyone thinks she’s dead; she knows they don’t.

* * *

“ _Heda_ is desperately searching for _Wanheda,”_ she overhears, “To have the Commander of Death on her side would win her the war before it even begins. Even _Azplana_ isn’t that suicidal.”

“I heard _Azplana_ already has her. That when _Heda_ betrayed her on the Mountain, _Wanheda_ went to _Azgeda_ instead.”

“Lies,” a third person replies, scraping her chair along the wooden floor to join in, “I heard _Wanheda_ still treads the forests, leaving a burning path where she goes.”

They eat that one up like horse to a feed.

Clarke huffs a laugh and shakes her head and catches the eyes of the innkeep, looking at her like he knows something he shouldn’t. And maybe he does, she’s been working here for months, and he has given her more kindness than necessary.

When the bar empties later in the evening, he pulls her to the side and holds her shoulders and regards her with heavy, dark eyes.

“You are _Maun-de fraga_ ,” he states; not asks, because he already knows.

“Yes,” she replies and squares her shoulders.

“If you love this land you will not side with _Azgeda_ ,” he says and then moves off; ending the conversation there.

He doesn’t bring it up again. And neither does she.

* * *

Six months ago she imagined her meeting with Lexa would be a rather bit more dramatic than it is.

She was furious with Lexa, then. Hated her with every visceral part of her of her being. Wanted to beat Lexa senseless and drown her in the blood and burden that Clarke must carry.

But six months is a long time; and time heals all wounds, even the most deep and gnarled and ugly.

The central spire is heavily guarded, even more so with war on their doorstep, but people still come and go freely; Lexa still spends hours a day listening to their concerns.

Clarke keeps her head down takes the pulley system up and up and up; the gun getting heavier as she goes. The guards nod at her and she nods back and continues on; she is not scarred and marked and is not Azgeda, so she is not held as a threat. Not yet.

She gets in line and listens to the blood pounding in her ears and when the guard searches her and misses the lump of her gun; a weapon they are not used to, she feels the beast inside her rattle its cage; so close.

But then she is standing in the throne room and Lexa is sitting there and talking with an older man and she just looks— _tired._

Two other people go before her, and Clarke listens to them too and hears their complaints and their worries and their reports of Azgeda men treading on their land and Lexa listens too. Lexa listens and nods and sends wordless gestures to guards and men and scouts and warriors in the room too; those flooding out and new ones coming in.

And then all of a sudden, it’s Clarke's turn.

She’s a stranger, she thinks, she knows.

Or not a stranger, because Lexa’s eyes thin to near slits and her head cocks to the side and Clarke sees her hands clench and her breath quicken. As if a deeper part of her knows what, or who, it is she is looking at.

“ _Heya, Lexa_ ” Clarke says, using Trigedasleng over English; because she has not had to use it in some time and the foreign tongue feels more at home than not.

“You will address _Heda_ by her proper—” a man says, moving forward.

But Lexa slams her fists against her throne and all but yells, “ _Chil ya daun,”_

And then she is rising on shaking legs, Clarke notices, and descending from her throne and from her dais and looking at Clarke like she’s seeing a ghost— and maybe she is.

“Clarke?” she says, in a tone barely above a whisper, green eyes searching every inch of Clarke’s face, desperately looking for a piece of the old her.

“ _Sha_ ,” Clarke says and offers her a shaking smile, and the gun in her pocket doesn’t even register; but the beast in her chest does. No longer angry, no longer rattling at its cage. Preening instead. Purring. Desperately pushing against Clarke’s walls, “ _Sha, Heda.”_

“Leave us,” she says, addressing everyone but Clarke, “ _Nau!”_

* * *

The room empties bar two guards, standing at the doors with impassive looks on their faces, hands tucked behind their backs.

“You’re alive,” Lexa says, (states really), “I— Your people think you are dead, Clarke.”

“I have no people,” Clarke replies, short, tense, feeling her jaw work itself over the words.

Six months is a long time to dwell on a grudge, she thinks. But six months is also a long time to become impartial to events past. She knows that Lexa was doing what she thought was right. She knows that she would have done the same, if given the chance. She knows that, by killing the people in the Mountain, even in the innocents, she was doing the same thing Lexa did to her; betrayal.

She still hates Lexa, viscerally so. Thinks Lexa is as much to blame as herself for the road she was forced to take. But a part of her still loves Lexa, too. Sees herself in her. Finds comfort in the Commander of the Ground; especially now that she is the other side of the proverbial coin.

“Yes. It appears so.”

“I missed you,” Clarke admits, feeling the tears prick at her eyes and the invisible hand around her throat, “I hate you.”

“I deserve it,” Lexa replies and Clarke sees the way her hands shake, desperate to reach out, “The stories do not do you justice, Clarke.”

“Ah yes, _Wanheda._ Last I heard she was wandering through the snow and leaving a path of fire. It’s all very symbolic, isn’t it?”

“Why have you come, Clarke? You could have stayed gone, I would not have blamed you.”

“My boss told me that if I cared about him, I wouldn’t side with _Azgeda._ I guess this is the opposite of that.”

She hates Lexa. She _loves_ Lexa. She hates that she loves Lexa.

She holds her arm out and juts her chin out and smiles, “ _Kom wor, Heda_.”

Lexa looks at her, drinks her in, letting her green eyes soak all of Clarke, all of Wanheda in, “ _Kom war, Wanheda.”_

* * *

Civil war is never pretty. The history books told Clarke that by the age of twelve.

And this one is no different.

Except, maybe it is. Because Clarke is here for this one. The Commander of Death. Armored and painted and red hair cleansed to blonde. Clarke is here and has no emotion in her eyes or in her hands or on her tongue.

And when _Azgeda_ arrives and Nia walks into the throne room with a billowing cloak and an air of certainty and superiority, Clarke doesn’t miss the way she falters at her presence. She doesn’t miss the way her small armed entourage does, either.

Clarke was held as a secret. Clarke was brought to the tower and given a room and hid away until the armies arrival. Because Clarke was Lexa’s trump card. Clarke wasn’t a chess piece, she was the entire board.

“ _Monin, Nia_ ,” Lexa says, letting the self-satisfactory grin dance across her features, “I trust you know _Wanheda?”_

Nia threatens in low tones and makes claims the Commander of Death does not frighten her; but Clarke can see the fear in her eyes and in the eyes of her people. And suddenly, the tales, the legends, no longer bother Clarke. Not anymore.

War breaks out by morning. Not within the city walls, because even Nia is not that bloodthirsty. But beyond, in the forests and towns and camps. And Clarke worries less for her people and more for Niylah and for the village she made home and for the people she met along the way. If she is the Commander of Death, then she prays for their safety and begs the unknown force not to take them.

Skaikru still turn up in jeeps and trucks, guns blazing. Skaikru pile into the tower and into the throne room and demand to be told what is going on and only pause when they meet Clarke’s gaze across the room.

Her Mother goes to move first, but Lexa raises her hand and a guard grips Abby’s arm and stops her progress. And when she calls out to Clarke, she can’t help but look away; turning on her heel and removing herself from the room.

Lexa is easy. Her own people are not.

She refuses to see any of them and instead sends the message to them that, if they want to speak to Clarke, they will side with Lexa and defend her lands. It doesn’t surprise her when they agree.

Civil war is brutal and bloody and fought as much in the skirmishes of the field as in the war room and whenever Nia tries to flex herself and her people and the power she holds, Clarke steps forward and becomes a far more overbearing figure than she thought possible.

Civil war is brutal and bloody but when the other clans get word that _Wanheda_ is aside their Commander, they rally to _her_ side, not Lexa’s. They condemn the Ice Nation and Nia and call for her removal as Queen and when she turns her focus on them instead, Lexa removes her head.

It’s quick and painless and more than she offered Costia some years before, Clarke knows. But it still feels like justice when the beheaded body rains blood and then crumples to the floor. It still feels like justice for Lexa, and justice for Costia, and just for Clarke herself.

Civil war lasts for months and fizzles out almost as quick as it begins.

And when Prince Roan is made King, Clarke grips him by the forearm and looks him in the eye and tells him that if he wants to lead his people to prosperity, he must undo years of torture and manipulation. And he agrees.

* * *

Clarke doesn’t know where or how or why it starts, but she knows how it ends.

Clarke hears the name _Wanheda_ less and less as a figure of terror and more a figure of peace. The guiding hand of their Commander, the neutral voice of Death and Mercy itself.

Clarke is bowed to and saluted and called _Wanheda_ as an act and sign of respect, rather than fear. And Clarke settles into it like it is a second skin.

She is not _Skaikru_ , not the same way Bellamy and Raven and her Mother are; but she is not _Trikru_ either, not a true Grounder, not like Octavia; who blends in with the royal guard and wraps herself around Clarke when they meet again and kisses Clarke and cries into her shoulder, glad she is not dead.

She is something in between, existing between planes much the same as Death itself. And that suits her just fine.

 _Wanheda_ becomes less of a tale of a fear and more of an anchor.

She hears children talk of her as if she is kept only on the mortal plane by Lexa herself. And when she catches them staring she points over their shoulders and runs away and watches them turn back and spook; proving their theories right.

She is still a story, still a legend; but it does not weigh her down as it did before.

She bears her mark and her title with pride.

And when Lexa asks for her hand, Clarke gives it with the same kind of pride; coalescing themselves into one.


	10. Ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im BAD SORRY
> 
> KILL ME
> 
> catch me over at my tumblr [@bestheda](http://bestheda.tumblr.com/) for a moodboard or a chat or something!
> 
> based on the prompts from [@clextober](https://clextober.tumblr.com/)

_“Maybe someday you and I will owe nothing more to our people”_

Lexa pays the ultimate price for her love and for her unwavering fealty to Clarke _kom Skaikru._

Lexa feels her heart drop at the sounds of a scuffle and of gunfire and when she opens the unguarded door, she feels the bullet enter her stomach and exit her back. It doesn’t hurt, not really; her brain makes sure of that. But the look on Clarke’s face _does._ The absolute horror.

Her legs go out from under her. This isn’t like the arrow that struck her when she was fourteen, or the sword that opened the gash at her gut; this is a different kind of pain. And goddess. Clarke is there and watching her and touching at her with shaking hands, eyes begging, mouth begging louder.

Titus was always so rash, always so pigheaded. She trusted him though, she really did. This was unforgivable though. _Love is weakness_ ? What kind of a lesson is that, she thinks, _his hatred is weaker._

They send for Abby, somewhere outside the city walls, but she is bleeding fast, she can feel the sticky black substance pouring from her gut and staining her skin and ebbing between Clarke’s fingers like a torrent.

She can’t breathe. Her chest, heavy. Her throat, filled with blood. She can feel, only vaguely, the tears against her cheeks. Her head swimming.

“My spirit will find—” she starts, and it takes almost all of her energy, but Clarke cuts her off, angry, unabashedly scared eyes looking at her.

“No,” Clarke says, a hand pressing roughly against the hole in her gut, “No I’m not letting you die.”

They’d just lain together, Lexa thinks above the fog in her head. Goddess she’d finally had a single beautiful moment with Clarke and it was torn away not thirty minutes later. They could have had more, they could have _been_ more. But not now.

“There’s nothing more you can do,” she chokes out, around the blood, around the shadows creeping at her vision, “The next Commander will protect you,” she promises.

“I don’t _want_ the next Commander,” Clarke pleads, and the pressure on her gut lessens, as if Clarke can tell the fragile life beneath her is slipping away, “I want _you.”_

That’s all Lexa ever wanted to hear. From the moment she kissed Clarke in that tent months ago. That’s all she wanted. She feels her chest take a breath, a sigh of relief. At least she knows Clarke loves her.

“ _Ai gonplei ste odon_ ,” Lexa says, and her vision is so dark now, so painfully dark; even if Abby comes it will be too late, far _far_ too late.

“No,” Clarke says, her bottom lip trembling, hand against Lexa’s head shaking, “No I won’t accept that.”

She can feel the Commanders in her head, see them even, holding their hands out to her, waiting, begging her to come. To let her mortal body go and join them in the great beyond.

“You were right, Clarke. Life is about more than just surviving,” Lexa recites, and it’s true now, she thinks.

She didn’t believe the sentiment before; life had always been so very cruel to her. Life was just one task to survive after another. And she hadn’t believed it when she abandoned Clarke on that mountain side either. But she does now. She did the moment she fell into bed with Clarke; felt Clarke against her naked skin and her fingers in and around her. Goddess she believes it now.

She feels her heart clench, her stomach clench harder, bile rising to her throat. _Not now,_ she thinks and pleads, _please no, just a little more time, please._

“In peace, may you leave the shore,” Clarke starts, and Lexa hears the anguish and heartbreak in her voice, “In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels, until our final journey on the ground. May we meet again.”

It’s beautiful, Lexa thinks, she’s beautiful. She’s always been so stunningly beautiful. She loves Clarke, she thinks. She needs to tell her, she hasn’t told her. No, her mouth isn’t working why isn’t her mouth working.

She stares at Clarke, begging her to see; begging her to understand.

And then Clarke is bending over her and cupping at her face and pressing a beautifully soft kiss to her lips and Lexa tries to kiss back, she truly does. But the darkness grips her fast. Far too fast.

* * *

The first thing she registers is how light she feels.

How warm and beautiful and soft everything is.

She’s somewhere from her childhood; a field near Polis. Her and Costia loved it here, Anya too.

The grass is so green, greener than she has ever seen it. And the sun warm. The wind gentle.

“How dare you die this early,” a voice says and she doesn’t startle; as if she is unable to do so, “Can’t believe I escaped the _Maunon_ and died for you and you _still_ end up dying some pitifully early death, tragic.”

Anya was always abrasive, ever since they were children. And when Lexa turns and sees her trudging through the grass towards her, as beautiful as the last time she saw her alive, she can’t help but smile.

“Titus shot me,” Lexa says with a shrug, “It is what it is.”

“The bald bastard? Well that’s bullshit,” Anya continues and then wraps Lexa up in a crushingly hard hug, and Lexa wraps her arms around her in return, burying her head in the taller woman’s collar, “You deserved to live a better life than this, _seken_.”

“Maybe.”

Anya leans back but does not let her arms stray from her, not completely; hands content to wander Lexa’s body and face, drinking her in, “You loved her, didn’t you? _Clarke?”_

“Yes. Very much so.”

“Mmm,” Anya hums, and shakes her head with a tired little laugh, “Yes she was easy to love, wasn’t she? Powerful. Smart. I am sorry I never got to see you two together I—”

“She told me what happened. I forgave her. She brought me the lock of hair, because she knew what it would mean to me. She told me the story of your escape.”

“You fell in love with an idiot who could not swim. How very like you.”

Lexa feels the bubble of laughter in her throat and the tears at her eyes and the pain deep in her gut and in her chest, “I guess I did.”

“Why are you crying, _seken?”_

“I never did tell her. I could not— Costia died when I admitted those feelings. I could not let that happen to her, too. But the Ice Queen is dead. She would have been _safe_. She _was_ safe. And Titus—”

“So go back and show her then, _Heda._ Protect her and love her and shepherd her from afar. War is coming, I have seen it. Pigheaded Sky People. She will need you.”

The sun is warm and the grass is soft and Anya is right. This world is good and beautiful, but it is nothing without Clarke, she knows.

She closes her eyes and feels Anya’s hands on her face and her lips on her forehead and the tears running down her cheeks. And Anya wipes them away and whispers _something_ in her ear, but the sound of the field drowns it out.

“Go, Lexa.”

And she does.

* * *

She has no idea how long it’s been, she thinks.

But Aden is the new Commander; Aden with his warpaint and his crowning jewel and the Commanders in his head, carrying the metaphorical flame; a piece of Lexa’s flesh sewn into his own.

Aden is the new Commander and he is looking at Clarke with sad, knowing eyes, and putting a hand on her shoulder and bringing her in close for a hug.

“You are free to stay, _Wanheda_ ,” he says when he pulls back, “War is coming but I will not make you choose a side.”

Clarke gives him a grateful shaking smile and holds his face in her hands and lets her blue eyes drag over him, “You are far too young for this, Aden. She would not—”

“She’s still with me,” he replies tapping his head with his lopsided little grin, heavier now, for having to kill his friends, Lexa knows, “I’ve already been told I am far too young for this, by _all_ of them,” he says with a dry laugh.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke whispers out, letting her hands fall to her side, balling up tightly, “I’m _so_ sorry.”

And Aden is touching at her, far too gentle, far too soft and knowing and loving; like a younger brother burdened with his sisters trauma, “She does not blame you, Clarke. And neither do I. Come, I will show you your quarters. Your friend who denounced the _Skaikru_ will be rooming with you, if that is okay?”

Clarke nods and follows him and Lexa follows them both. Unseen. Unheard.

She knows what she is, she doesn’t need to see herself to confirm it. A _keryon_. A spirit. A ghost. Doomed (or not doomed, she thinks) to travel the world forever. A hand to guide. A hand to love.

And she _does_ love Clarke.

* * *

Clarke doesn’t need to choose a side.

Aden makes that _very clear._ Aden sits in front of the Coalition when they try to argue and slams his hand into the arm of his throne and demands quiet and shows a side of him that Lexa never got to see; powerful and commanding and everything she ever trained into him; and Lexa is _so_ very proud.

Clarke doesn’t need to choose a side, but she does.

Clarke chooses Aden. Clarke chooses to dress in furs and leathers and armor and paint her face with red and stand beside Aden. None of Clarke, all of _Wanheda._

Clarke chooses Aden and when they march on the blockade around Arkadia, Clarke looks her old people in the eyes and tells them she owes them _nothing._

Clarke has given so much already, Lexa thinks. It is understandable that she is sick of giving.

Arkadia will be given leeway, in time, if they choose to obey the rules set upon them. It is not vengeance, Lexa can see that now, but it is not really justice either. So many of her people were killed, so many senselessly lost. Even her.

Lexa tends to Clarke, Lexa walks beside her and holds her hand and presses cold kisses into the side of Clarke’s head. Clarke feels none of it, but Lexa stays by anyway.

 _May we meet again_ , she thinks.

* * *

Arkadia flexes its muscles over and over and over. But bullets are a finite resource and shooting at enemies you cannot see is a waste.

Pike is ousted as Chancellor sometime in the first winter; and it is a harsh one. Even with the weekly caravans bringing them supplies and food, the Skaikru suffer.

Clarke watches it happen from the treeline, crouched up in a tall evergreen, hugging against its trunk with the wind whipping about her face. Lexa crouches unseen next to her, watching it too.

The uproar from the station can be heard from the trees and when Pike is pushed out of the gates and the heavy metal closed behind him, Lexa feels the inward smile bloom in Clarke. And when Pike shivers and shakes and looks out towards the forest, she follows Clarke down the tree to settle beside the prone form of Octavia, covered in snow and fallen forest litter.

“You can do it, O,” Clarke whispers, pressing a hand against Octavia’s shoulder, “Him first, the others later.”

Octavia stands and Lexa stands behind her. Octavia pulls an arrow into the nook of her bow and breathes deep and strong and holds her breath and Lexa steadies her arm and shifts her aim. And when the arrow loosens with a muted _thunk_ , all three of them watch it sail through the sky.

The sound it makes as it connects with Pike’s frozen form is far more pleasant. Far less muted. A scream of agony and a gurgled groan and the man’s corpse falls into a heap and writhes and shakes and Clarke stands in the treeline, a dark red smear of paint across her nose, and _yells_ , “ _Jus drein jus daun_.”

And the rest of the forest goes up much the same.

* * *

By the time winter ends, twelve other _Skaikru_ have been put to death much the same way. Bellamy is only spared on Clarke’s orders; she will deal with him _personally_ , she says. And Aden acquises.

By the time winter ends, Aden sends an envoy to Skaikru’s lines and demands to speak with their current Chancellor, and when Marcus Kane emerges, shoulders squared and head held high, Clarke is hardly surprised; Lexa isn’t either.

Peace talks are jagged and rough and Aden does not give even an _inch_ of wiggle room. Aden stands his ground and spits at Kane’s feet and tells him that if he wants to live on their land, then they best be ready to follow _his_ rules. And Kane agrees.

Five months of war and of blockade is enough; they are starving and hurt and are willing to bow their heads and be a part of the society of the ground. Many did not agree with Pike; not after the massacre months in the past. And those that did are now dead; either within the walls or out.

Lexa beams and touches at Clarke’s shoulder and feels the muscles jolt beneath her fingers and Clarke searches the space she occupies; but empty blue eyes do not see her and instead turn back to Kane and demand Bellamy to be sent out; that he must pay for his crime, too.

And when Bellamy comes without order, without a fuss; Clarke looks at him and shakes her head and with tears in her eyes, tells him what must be done. And he cannot look at her, or Octavia, or Aden. He just nods his head and lets his tears fall freely.

Clarke, Commander of Death, lays his arm out upon a stump of a wood, methodically ties it off and takes Aden’s sharpened sword and, with a nod of his head, she brings it down over Bellamy’s arm; lopping it off by the shoulder.

Bellamy does not scream.

* * *

The middle of spring brings the end of the war.

The blockade remains, but more caravans are sent, teachers too; people to aid the _Skaikru_ in farming the land and setting up food and wood stores.

Clarke returns to Polis and Lexa does too and when Clarke methodically strips herself of her armor and methodically washes herself free of paint and grime, Lexa sits by and silently watches.

And when Clarke shakes in the bath and viciously scrubs at herself, and lets the choking sobs fall, Lexa moves closer and touches at Clarke and begs her to not blame herself.

“I’m so sorry,” Clarke whispers to nothing, to nobody, “I never wanted any of this.”

Lexa knows, she _knows_. Clarke just wanted _life._ Clarke just wanted to be free. Lexa did too, really.

She dips her hand in the water and links it with Clarke’s and presses a kiss into her the side of her head and against her ear and wishes she could tell Clarke just how much she _loves_ her, how she will always love her.

“I’m so sorry, Lexa,” Clarke whispers and lets her body go limp; less of Clarke and more of _Wanheda_ ; shutting the girl behind closed doors.

And when she dresses again, in fresh furs and leathers, and smears the red paint across her nose and down her chin, Lexa understands.

* * *

 _Wanheda_ is of no clan.

 _Wanheda_ is Aden’s Valkyrie and right-hand.

 _Wanheda_ walks the streets of Polis and looks at people with dead, empty eyes. And people bow their heads and press their fists to their chests and give her a wide berth less they call Death upon themselves.

When Skaikru finally enters they city limits for the first time after two years, her Mother looks at Clarke like she doesn’t know her. And Lexa knows she doesn’t, not anymore. Lexa’s willing to bet Abby hasn’t known Clarke for some time, actually. Before TonDC. Before the crash to Earth.

Few people see the true Clarke; the girl beneath the mask. Only Aden and Octavia are privy to that much. And even then, it is with fleeting glances in dark hallways, or in the moonlight of a cold forest. Clarke almost ceases to exist, really. Even with Lexa tugging at every heartstring she can find, the Clarke she loves slips further from her grasp.

* * *

Not a year later a group of orphans are sent to Polis and Aden sees them in; it is a part of his duty, he says. And Clarke follows.

A little girl with wild blue eyes and untamed hair fights with the orphanage staff and kicks Aden in the shin and climbs a pipe against a wall and hangs out at the very top and refuses to budge; little fingers gripped around the metal.

And Clarke looks up at her from the floor and shakes her head, “She looks like Lexa,” she says.

And Aden, rubbing at his legs, laughs and agrees.

Lexa doesn’t think so. Lexa is offended, actually. She _never_ climbed a pipe like this, she was _never_ this unruly.

“Kind of like you too, actually,” Aden says after a beat of silence, “Could have been your child if—”

 _If I hadn’t died,_ Lexa thinks and sees the same thought reflected in Clarke’s features.

“Sorry,” he continues, rubbing a hand at the back of his head, “Sometimes I forget. She feels real in my head still.”

“She was real,” Clarke bites out and heaves a sigh, looking back at the child on the pipe, “What is your name?” she asks in Trigedasleng.

“ _Madi,”_ the child replies, glaring at Clarke, “Who are you?”

“ _Wanheda_. Come down and apologize for kicking _Heda,_ right now. I will give you to the count of three. One—”

The child scrambles at an absolute beast of a pace. Everybody knows who Wanheda is and even an unruly child isn’t about to tempt Death

“Sorry!” she blurts out and throws her arms around Clarke’s middle, glaring at Aden, “I’m sorry, _Heda!”_

“Apology accepted,” Aden says, bowing his head, “Where are you from?”

“ _Louwoda Kliron._ ”

* * *

Clarke adopts the child, almost instantly, actually.

Lexa knows it’s because on the walk back to the spire, Aden spoke more of how Madi had Clarke’s eyes but Lexa’s hair and she felt the change within Clarke; the settling of the beast in her lovers stomach.

Lexa watches Clarke walk into motherhood like she is a natural. Watches her take the small bundle of hyperactivity in her arms and press kisses to the side of her head and tickle her into submission. Lexa watches the love bloom in Clarke’s chest and the change in her face and the way she regards others around her.

Lexa watches with abject horror when Clarke first sees the child bleed; black blood trickling from the cut on her forehead.

Clarke _begs_ Aden for a reform in the Nightblood program. Titus overhears it and shouts his disapproval, they had always done things a certain way, he says. And Lexa feels her blood boil under her skin; the cold that spreads throughout the room does not go unnoticed.

“The Commanders say it is time for a change,” Aden announces, “Nightbloods will still train and practice and learn, but there will be no more needless death; the strongest can be judged in other ways.”

It’s met with resounding agreement from the Coalition— letting generations of children die has always been something that did not sit well with them. Titus is verbally beaten into submission; Gaia takes his spot instead.

Lexa feels Clarke let out the breath she was holding and sees Aden let one out too.

* * *

Clarke is almost thirty when she very nearly dies.

Clarke feels the arrow pierce at her gut and looks down and gives the shaft of wood an offended twist of her mouth; as if it dare do exactly what it’s done.

The arrow alone does not nearly kill her, though. The sepsis does.

Lexa watches on as the poison runs its way through Clarke’s body; turning her skin red and fingers dark.

Lexa watches on and sees Clarke’s blue eyes flit to her and the smile play on her lips and Lexa smiles too and reaches a hand down to tuck an errant hair behind Clarke’s ear.

“No no,” Lexa says, pressing a kiss to Clarke’s forehead, “Your daughter still needs you, Clarke. Not yet.”

“Asshole,” Clarke replies ignoring the offended look on the faces of the Healers tending to her, “I have spent enough time alone.”

“Spend some more.”

Clarke does.

* * *

Lexa watches Clarke shepherd Madi into her teenage years and laughs when Madi becomes a brat under Octavia’s thumb. Laughs harder when Clarke tries to discipline them _both_ and fails magnificently at it.

Lexa watches Clarke chop off all her hair in a fit of anxiousness one day, and then startle in the mirror when she looks to her left, blue eyes meeting green before desperately searching the empty space Lexa inhabits.

“Lexa,” Clarke whispers out; but Lexa isn’t there, not really; a figment of Clarke’s imagination, “She’s so beautiful, Lexa. You’d love her.”

Lexa already does.

* * *

Aden is remarkably good at dodging death. Clarke makes sure of that.

Aden is thirty and Clarke is in her forties and has scars and burns and missing digits in proof of her servitude to the boy-Commander.

Madi is set to ascend next, Lexa knows. When Aden dies, she will take his spot. She is the best of the current batch of Nightbloods, by and far the strongest too.

But Madi is still so very young and stupid and brash and headbutts with Clarke more often than not. But Clarke _loves_ her, more than herself even.

And when Madi sheepishly brings home her first girlfriend, Clarke wraps the other girl up in a tight hug and then sets her down and promptly pretends she is as much _Wanheda_ as she was before Madi’s arrival; it doesn’t work.

* * *

Clarke buries her Mother several years later.

Clarke buries her and Lexa silently, invisibly holds her. And Clarke cries into the pillow of her bed and balls her fists in the blankets where Lexa lies.

“I hate you,” she mumbles out, the words sticking to her tears, “I hate you so much. I was so close but you kept me here.”

“I love you too,” Lexa replies.

* * *

“You have a ghost,” Aden tells Clarke over dinner one evening while Madi is out on a hunt, girlfriend included.

“I know,” Clarke replies, cutting into her potato, “She’s been here for a while.”

“Mmm. Since I ascended, actually.”

“Yeah, she’s a real pain in the ass.”

Lexa smiles and leans her back against Clarke’s and closes her eyes.

“You’re free to go, you know,” Aden says around a mouthful of food, “You're free to leave whenever you want, Clarke.”

She feels Clarke sigh, feels the way her shoulders sag, “I can’t do that to you, Aden. And Madi—”

“Madi is a grown woman, Clarke. Your daughter knows you carry a burden larger than all of us. She will forgive you.”

“And you?”

“I’m surprised you’ve stuck around for as long as you have.”

“Ass.”

“I love you, Clarke. And as your brother, _and_ your Commander, I’m telling you it’s okay if you want to go.”

Clarke doesn’t tell him she’s been considering it for years.

* * *

Lexa follows Clarke out of the gates one very early morning; watching her shaking legs pushing through the thick snow below.

Clarke took an arrow to the back some months previous and has had trouble walking since; even with Raven’s help.

“Oh,” she hears Clarke say as they push into a small clearing some miles from the city, “Wow, this is the clearest I’ve ever seen you since—”

 _Since I died,_ Lexa thinks and offers Clarke a smile and a shrug of her shoulders.

“Huh,” Clarke hums and looks around; Lexa knows this is the same field in which she stood and talked with Anya, “Guess you really do see those you love before you die.”

Clarke lays down in the thick snow and Lexa lays with her; feeling the way Clarke’s shaking hand tangles itself with her own.

“May we meet again, Lexa.”

“May we meet again, Clarke.”

* * *

Aden finds her smiling body not a half day later. Aden does not miss the imprint of another person pressed into the snow beside Clarke.

Aden picks her up and shepherds her home and whispers the Travellers Blessing as he does.

Aden holds a ceremony and burns her body and burns Lexa’s old armor, too. A symbolic death together, he thinks.

Aden wraps around Madi and Madi wraps around him and he tells her all about how Clarke loved her and that she wouldn't have left without a good reason. And Madi tells him she knows; that she's always known.  _Wanheda_ carries a burden none else can.

“It was time she went home,” Madi says and smiles at him and juts her chin towards the sky.

“Yeah,” he agrees, searching the stars and watching them blink back, “Yes it was.”


	11. Fall Festivities (1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lateness of this prompt fill! I'm getting through this one and TrickorTreat as I post this.
> 
> I just was feeling kind of bummed to be honest. But a lot of you are way nicer than I deserve lmao.
> 
> Anyway !! Do you notice the (1) of the chapter title? Do you? Because you should. This is the one chapter I am actually thinking of continuing. Because it was getting too long for more than a single chapter, and doesn't entirely fill the prompt (yet). But I know there's a FEW of these ya'll really have liked the concept of. And I'm thinking, after the 13 Days are over, I might keep using this overarching thing to put a few more follow-on prompts of! Either entirely new ones, or put some more stories in some of the older ones; like I know a lot of ya'll are fancy on the Hocus Pocus one? I believe.
> 
> SO ANYWAY I HOPE U LIKE THIS ONE !!!
> 
> as always feel free catch me over at my tumblr [@bestheda](http://bestheda.tumblr.com/) for a an accompanying moodboard or a chat or something!
> 
> based on the prompts from [@clextober](https://clextober.tumblr.com/)

“So what do Australian schools do for Fall then?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. Some schools might do Halloween, mine sure didn’t.”

“Well that’s boring.”

“Fall isn’t really that big over there, Rae. Cut her some slack. Have you ever seen orange leaves though?”

“Like the ones outside?”

“No like, you know, before this?”

“No. Today is the my first day seeing the outdoors. My papà forbade windows in the house lest we fall victim to the common cold. Yes I’ve seen orange leaves, Finn.”

“Australia sounds super boring though. No snow _and_ no Fall?”

“We have snow. And I never tried to say it wasn’t boring. I just keep saying it’s better than _here._ ”

She regrets ever bringing it up to begin with. She really does.

They’d all been offhandedly watching television, piled into her and Raven’s tiny apartment and an advertisement for a farm or _something_ had popped up and Clarke was accidentally foolish enough to mention she’d never done anything shown. No hay riding, no corn maze, no pumpkin carving (well, not at a _farm_ anyway), and definitely no apple picking because honestly, what was the point of _that_ venture? Apples were in grocery stores.

“Why do you stick around _here_ then, Griffin, go home,” Finn replies, chuckling under the flurry of hands from Raven.

“Okay but one of you can break the news to O and Bell that I’ve bailed, though.”

“You know when someone says something and your fight or flight reaction activates?” Raven says, moving to all but spread out over Clarke’s lap, “Because I just got that. And my gut is telling me to just run with you. It’s a kinder fate.”

“Let’s go to the farm,” Finn continues, shuffling along the floor to sit right beside them, “Come’on it’ll be fun. Clarke’s loaded, we might as well.”

“My _Mum_ is loaded and she’s just paying for me to be here because she thinks I’ll forgive her for killing Dad.”

“Harsh, bub,” Raven says, touching at Clarke’s chin, “Wanna talk about it?”

“No more than I already have. If you two can get Octavia and Bell to agree to go to some stupid ass backwards farm then I’ll go. But good luck. Octavia hates—”

* * *

As it turns out, Clarke Griffin finds out that Octavia doesn’t hate all the things Octavia has said she’s hated before. Clarke know it’s because she googled the farm, and there was a picture of an intensely cute young man on one of the images; but Octavia isn’t admitting anything.

It’s why she’s stuck in Bellamy’s stupid beloved van going five miles under the speed limit because he’s too cautious of a driver (better safe than sorry, he says). It’s also why she’s stuck with her bag shoved in the back of the ugly truck and a scowl set on her face and her arms crossed and her entire friend group cheering about going to an orchard farm.

She could be doing _anything_ else other than going to some stupid fucking hick farm; but _whatever_ okay, here she is.

“Are we nearly there?” she groans from the backseat, “I’m bored.”

“We’d get there faster if you stopped asking bub,” Raven says, letting her head knock against the glass of her window and her fingers curl around Clarke’s.

“Octavia you’re a shithead, I can’t believe you agreed to this. Why don’t you all just kill me now instead of letting me get my head kicked in by a feral cow.”

“You’re afraid of cows?” Finn asks, turning around in the front seat to look at the three girls tucked into the back, “Really?”

“Papà also forbade farm animals. Lack of windows n all.”

“What?”

“Nothing, Bell. Keep driving.”

She refuses to admit that she actually loves the countryside; she has since the terrain changed from Boston city to— whatever this area of the United States was called. She’d only been here three months so the city was her entire life. But it was _stunningly_ beautiful outside of it. But by admitting that, she’d be admitting defeat and like. Fuck that, honestly.

“Turn off. No. No, Bell. Next one. Next one!”

“Stop yelling! I heard you the first time.”

Clarke was only in America in the first place because of her friends. Well no, that was a slight lie. She was in America because her Father died three months ago and her Mother is the one that pulled the plug and Clarke kind of holds grudges. And her friends stateside asked if she wanted time away and her Mother looked at her like she was going to say no, so Clarke went.

“Holy shit this farm is huge. Google Maps is saying this is all part of it.”

“Where do you think they hide the bodies?”

“Hey, Finn. I’ll pay you never to say those words in that order ever again, dude.”

“Awh look, horses!”

“Hey Clarke, are you scared of horses too?”

Clarke closes her eyes and pretends she’s not paying attention. It’s only a few days, what’s the absolute worst that could happen? She gets bitten by a cow and eats a rotten apple?

* * *

By the time they manage to find the dirt road that leads onto the farm and then actually make it down the entire dirt road without Bellamy having a fit about his car, it’s an hour past the time they were due to arrive and Clarke is considering absolutely just laying down and letting a cow trample her. There’s one in the yard, even. Just blankly staring into the car, directly into her soul, she thinks.

“Hey folks you must be the Griffin family?” a man says, approaching the drivers side that Bellamy slides out of.

_Of course._

“Oh hey Griff,” Finn says, turning to face the back again, “That’s nice your Mom booked us all as a family.”

Clarke glares at him and lowers herself into the seat and begs the universe to let her disappear.

“Or— not nice,” Finn continues, tapping a small beat out on the window frame, “Yes we’re the Griffin family. She’s the Griffin family actually, we’re all just shitbag tagalongs. Hi.”

The man shakes his head and laughs, “Either way. Welcome. I’m Lincoln.”

“I’m Octavia,” Clarke grunts as she feels the aforementioned girl scrambling over her to hang out the window, “Hello. Octavia Blake. Hi.”

She doesn’t miss the cute little flirty smile on Octavia or the blush that climbs the young man’s face. Bellamy does though. Bellamy always misses signs his sister is interested in anyone. Always the last on the uptake.

“You can leave your truck parked here, if you like. Anywhere, really. We’re really excited to have you. We don’t get many people booking a whole week.”

Clarke sinks into her seat more and quietly groans into the side of Octavia’s stomach. She’d told her Mother to pay for _3 days._ Friday through to Sunday. That was it. Not that any of them had jobs to get back to. But that wasn’t the _point._

“Come’on in when you’re ready. Don’t mind the cow, she’s friendly. You can pat her, if you like.”

At least they’re all polite enough to wait until Lincoln is out of ear shot to simultaneously turn to Clarke and give her a look. She stays buried in Octavia’s midsection, hanging onto the girl so she doesn’t have to look any of them in the eye. Plus Octavia smells nice and threads her fingers in Clarke’s hair, so it’s a nice bonus.

“So, a week, huh? I only packed for like 3 days max.”

“I’m sure they have a washing machine.”

“He was cute.”

“He was alright looking.”

Clarke feels like she wants to cry.

* * *

The main farmhouse is massive, actually. And disgustingly well furnished. Beautiful. Stunning. Homey. Clarke runs out of adjectives thereabouts.

Lincoln is still the only person they’ve seen aside from themselves, but he tells Bellamy that’s pretty normal. Most everyone else is out and about working and won’t be back to the homestead for another few hours yet.

They’re each given their own room on the second level of the main house and Bellamy yet again misses when Octavia begins to flirt with the young man. And misses further when she purposefully chooses the bedroom closest to Lincoln’s. And _again_ misses further when Lincoln flirts back.

Clarke thinks Bellamy’s just super dense, actually.

“Tonight’s just a settling in kind of night,” Lincoln explains, shepherding them around the house and showing off the amenities, “Gustus, he’s the boss around here, got it all planned out a few days back, when you booked. Like I said, a week’s pretty unusual.”

“What can we say, we love the great outdoors.”

“Raven, you literally hate being outside—”

Clarke isn’t the only one to reach out and smack upside the back of Finn’s head.

“We have dinner at 6pm. Usually pretty much on the dot. Breakfast is between 5:30 and 7:00. And Lunch is between 11:00 and 1:00, depending. Y'all can eat outside of those hours, obviously, kitchen’s always open and the cooks can make anything, if you ask nice enough. But foods the best when you eat with family. Any questions?”

“Yeah. Did Mrs. G like organize anything in particular or?”

“Mrs. Griffin, who I assume was the lady on Skype, said to just bill whatever it is you kids wanted to do. We have hiking trails and dirt bikes and four wheelers and the orchard and tonnes of animals and there’s a nice lake, it’s a trek so we’d drive y’all. Gustus owns a helicopter, so that’s included in the package too. We can teach you to ride horses, make jam uh—”

“Can we ride a cow?”

“You can try. Silo, that’s the girl out the front, would probably let you. Just, give her an apple beforehand. She’s a sucker for sweet things. It’s why she’s kept up front. Cause she breaks out of her pasture and eats the trees.”

Clarke considers dying again, for the third time in as many hours. Her Mother is buying her love. She knows that. And it _hurts_ , if she’s honest. If her Mother cared she wouldn’t have pulled the plug that sent Clarke here to begin with.

“Right well, now that we’re done with whatever this is, I’m going to go catch a snooze, maybe text my Mum to stop interfering,” she says, stalking back off towards her room.

She doesn’t miss the whispered question by Lincoln, asking what’s up. She also doesn’t miss the hushed reply of Raven telling everyone to keep their mouths shut.

But the door closes behind her and all she can think about is the stupid looking warm bed.

* * *

“Clarke— Clarke wake up. Clarke, come’on, you’re being rude. We’re house guests.”

“Paying house guests,” Clarke mumbles before turning over and facing away from Raven, perched on the edge of the bed.

“We got shown the orchard earlier, it’s beautiful, Clarke. Come’on. Abby’s trying really hard, bub. Maybe spite her by actually having _fun?”_

Clarke grunts and pulls her blankets up and feels the way Raven’s hand ghosts across her shoulder before hearing a gentle sigh, “Okay. One of the farmers or whatever is like _smokin'_ hot. Her name is Anya. Her dad’s the big boss. Who, you know, if I was straight still is also a babe in a bear kind of way. Finn got yelled at by Indra, who works with the horses; was hilarious. Apparently there’s also another daughter running around but Anya says she keeps to herself, mostly. Saw photos though, also fuckin’ _smokin_. More your type though.”

“Is this meant to make me want to get out of bed? Appealing to my emotionally gay nature, Raven Reyes?”

“Is it working?”

“A little,” Clarke admits, turning back over to look her friend, her best friend really, “Finn got yelled at?”

“Yeah. He deserved it. Indra seems cool though. Octavia is smitten with Lincoln and her. Reckon they’ll have her up on a horse by Monday. They said she’s a natural with them.”

Clarke smiles and feels the tears prick at her eyes and the hands of her friend touching at her face and whispering apologies and pressing her forehead into Clarke’s, “No, bub. Come’on. Don’t cry. It’s awkward, you know how shit I am with this emotional crap.”

“I miss Dad,” Clarke chokes out, “And Mum’s being way too nice and she’s trying to buy me back and it’s working and I hate that it’s working.”

“I miss Jake too,” Raven says and kisses the gap between Clarke’s eyebrows, “Remember that time I was over in Melbourne and he took us down to the beach?”

She does; she remembers every moment she has ever spent with Raven, and every moment she has ever spent with her father, “When you got in the water and the seaweed touched your leg and you were so sure it was a shark?”

“Yeah and then he dove under and came back up with a fucking fish?”

“That was a good day. You wouldn’t stop crying and he didn’t know what to do with the fact that he just barehanded caught a fish.”

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah, sorry. Been holding that in since we got in the car.”

“Nah, it’s fine. Come have dinner though. Maybe we’ll meet the sexy mysterious sibling. Oh and you can meet Anya and tell me if I’m just like— imagining if she’s hot or if she’s actually hot because _ooh boy.”_

* * *

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes,” Clarke confirms mid bite on her potato, looking down the table at Anya, caught up in a conversation with Gustus (apparently).

“Nice,” Raven replies, smirking far too self-satisfactory, “Reckon she’s _ya know?”_

“Oh definitely. Nobody looks like that and isn’t.”

_“Nice”_

Clarke smiles and elbows her friend and reaches her fork over to steal a carrot off Bellamy’s plate, poking her tongue out when he reaches over to her own and steals a forkful of beans, “That wasn’t an fair exchange.”

“You hate beans, Clarke,” he says, shoveling them into his mouth, “Feeling better, by the way?”

“Yet to be seen. Are we allowed to wander about after dusk?”

“Yes,” Lincoln chimes in from two seats down, mid conversation with Octavia, “Sorry, I overhead. Yes. You’re free to walk the grounds. Take one of the dogs if you’re worried though. Scariest thing we have around here are the raccoons. But they’re more scared of you than the other way around.”

“He’s lying,” someone else speaks up and Clarke follows the voice to Gustus, cutting into a slab of meat the size of her head, “We get bears occasionally. But the moose are the scariest, the farms well lit until midnight, but if you see a moose head the other direction and don’t take your eyes off it. Moose are assholes.”

“Right. Bears and mooses and raccoons. Three whole animals I’ve never seen before in my entire life. Cool.”

“You’ve never seen a raccoon before?” Anya asks, putting down her fork and giving Clarke a look like she’s stupid, “Where are you from?”

“Australia? Well Melbourne but you know—”

“Oh shit, kid. I thought you were from California or someplace cause of your weird ass accent. Welcome to New Hampshire. Yeah don’t fuck with the moose.”

“Right, yeah. Don’t touch any of the weird American mammals. Got it. I’m going now before any other one of you mention some weird disgusting big mammal that can devour me whole. Thanks.”

Clarke pretends she isn’t terrified, at least all the way until the back door where she leashes _two_ of the dogs up. And then further at least until she’s out of sight of the house, where she promptly drops to her haunches and looks at the dogs.

“Protect me, okay? You two do that, right? What are you, goldies? Protect me.”

She pretends they don’t look at her like she’s stupid. Because she is, she feels stupid. Talking to dogs. Entrusting two idiot looking retrievers with her life? Staying a week on a farm in a foreign country. She’s out of her mind.

* * *

The orchard is beautiful, Clarke decides.

Especially after dusk. When all the paths are lit up with the orange glow of the picket lights. The entire place smells like apples and leaves and crisp fresh air that she can’t help but relax slightly.

“You two have it way too good,” she says, walking by a tree and plucking a reddened fruit off it, giving it a sniff before biting into it, waving it at the dogs below, “Like way too good. You’re pampered living here, you know that? Do dogs know they have good lives? Like, respective to other dogs, obviously.”

The apple is sweet and beautiful and leaves her mouth feeling washed out after the heavy roasted dinner. She has no idea what the protocol is for stealing an apple and then feasting it on around the property itself, so she just lobs the core into the distance and hopes for the best.

“My dad died,” she admits to the retrievers below, who, she must admit, are very dutiful listeners, all things considered, “Yeah, I know, sucks right? Mum’s out here trying to buy my love and forgiveness by showering me with a weeks holiday on some ass crack of nowhere farm. And it’s working, mind you. She’s an ass.”

“She killed him. She pulled the plug. Like what the fuck. He might have— I mean I _know_ you don’t wake up from a head injury like that, but he might have. But she just killed him. How the fuck am I meant to forgive that?”

Clarke huffs and stops and stares up at the sky and feels the dogs shuffle around at her feet. Even with the dim light from the farm, she’s never seen the sky this bright. Not in the Northern Hemisphere anyway. The sky was different, back at home; that sky was hers and her Father’s; this was nobodies she knew.

“I miss him. Nothing’s ever going to be the same, is it?”

“No,” a soft voice answers and Clarke nearly loses her footing at how far she jumps in the opposite direction, tripping over the pile of dogs at her feet.

When she rights herself, cheeks red and warm, she finds herself staring back at an equally flustered looking girl. And oh.  _Oh_ Raven was right. This is the missing sister, she knows. Everyone else was at dinner. Clarke considers dying again.

“Sorry,” the girl continues with a small smile, “I overheard you talking and didn’t recognize the voice. Didn’t mean to peep.”

“It’s fine,” Clarke chokes out, far more high pitched than intended, “It’s cool. Yeah, nah. It’s fine. What’s up. Hi. I’m Clarke. Clarke Griffin. I uh. Hi.”

“Lexa,” the girl replies, “Lexa Woods.”

Clarke shuffles. Man, _fuck_ Raven, she thinks. And fuck her Mother for letting this all happen. This must be pre-planned.

“Did you like— Did you hear all of it? Oh shit did you see me steal an apple and then lob the core because like, I can pay for that.”

“You already did, when you booked the week,” Lexa deadpans and approaches, leaning down to greet the dogs, who, Clarke notices, absolutely lap up the attention, “You could eat all the apples you wanted and you wouldn’t even put a dint in our sales revenue. This is just one orchard.”

“Right. Yeah. Nah. I can eat a lot of apples. Don’t challenge me.”

The moment Lexa lets out a little laugh Clarke’s done, she thinks. Absolutely done for. Like and well and truly digging her own grave at this point. She’ll kill Raven, even though she’s not to blame.

“You’re funny, Aussie. Would you like a guide back to the house?”

“Oh. Sure. I mean I’m like, an Arctic explorer or whatever, so I could just use the stars, but I don’t want to flex on you so, be my guest.”

Lexa hums with a little smirk, taking one of the dog leashes and gesturing with her chin over her shoulder, “Well, arctic explorer, lead the way.”

Clarke pretends like she doesn’t lead them in circles for a half hour before she feels a gentle hand on the dip of her back, steering in another direction; away from the orchard and towards the lights of the house in the distance (which yeah, she _absolutely obviously_ noticed before, _obviously)._

She also pretends she doesn’t feel a warmth bloom in her gut or in her chest or on her face. And pretends that she isn’t chatting with Lexa like they are old friends, or that she now has to spend an entire extra week around this girl.

She doesn’t miss when Lexa stalls tying the dogs back to their posts or the way her skin glows in the moonlight or the little smile on her face that hasn’t left since she first turned around and saw her in the dark of the trees.

Or the way that, when they enter the house, the smile falls and Lexa regards the workers and her family in a totally different manner. Cold and indifferent.

“Thank you, Lexa,” Clarke calls at her as she disappears down the hall; barely getting a glance back.

“Your friends are upstairs, in the lounge, Lincoln found some board games,” Gustus tells her, “I’m sorry, if Lexa was rude.”

“No,” Clarke says, eyes still trained on the dark hallway, “No, she was—” Clarke looks at him and shrugs with a small smile, “Polite. She was polite. I’m going to— go upstairs now. Thank you.”

Clarke doesn’t go into the lounge, instead disappearing into her own room; the one above Lexa’s she realizes, approximating the steps; and crawls into bed. She can hear the laughter from the lounge several doors down, but nothing from the floor below.

She breathes deep and hard and finds the sky out her window and watches the stars watch her back.

“Okay. I’ve got a week,” she says in a quiet voice, “Yeah nah. I can do this. Get a girl out of her shell, maybe marry her. Inherit a farm. We got this.”


End file.
